


A Different Kind of Good

by chipperdyke



Category: The Wicked Years Series - Gregory Maguire, The Wizard Of Oz (1939), Wicked - All Media Types, Wicked - Schwartz/Holzman
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Heavy Angst, Magical Pregnancy, Mutual Pining, No Fluff, Politics, Secret Relationship, just tons of goo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 10:13:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 46,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15410682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chipperdyke/pseuds/chipperdyke
Summary: It's one year after Shiz, and everyone is a little... tense.Post-Shiz, Wicked Witch era, through Dorothy, melting, and all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Halfway (I think) between the play and the book.
> 
> A fanfiction of Something Most Odd (https://archiveofourown.org/works/338132#main). Should be continuous, except that Fiyero doesn't have a wife in this one (but no hetero!). Also, you do not need to read that story to get started on this one (although it's highly recommended!)
> 
> This started dark and just kind of keeps getting darker. If the tags didn't scare you off, beware - mature themes ahead. This is not for the faint of heart. If it wasn't rated explicit for the sex, it would be rated mature for the plot.
> 
> Finally, I'm taking some liberties with the chronology and history of Kiamo Ko. I wanted Elphaba in the castle a bit earlier, and preferred Fiyero less important than the book. So, Elphaba's castle and the surrounding environs are closer to an adaptation of the movie than the book or play, and Fiyero is Gillikinese.

The fundraiser for the Animal Welfare Society was going swimmingly well. Glinda could barely believe the number of donors that had come out, despite the precarious times. They had booked as their keynote an old professor at Wellesley's, who also happened to be one of the founders of the society - and also happened to be a Horse. It seemed that the decision had not hurt their attendance.

She fluttered to the banquet table of a particularly prominent donor, allowing him to finish chewing before speaking. “Mr. Giles, how good of you to come out. And this is your lovely wife, I presume?” A new wife, but Glinda wouldn't point that out. “Can we count on your participation in the raffle? Any items in particular that have caught your eye?”

The pleasantries completed, she moved on to the next table. Soon, the banquet was nearly done, and it was time for the speakers.

She met Fiyero at the base of the podium. His timing was impeccable as always, and the brass buttons of his soldier's coat shone brightly under an equally charming smile.

They mounted the stage in lockstep and stood beside each other at the podium. Glinda began. “Welcome, good people of Oz."

A fearsome tremble overtook the packed pavilion, followed by the rumbling of thunder. On a sunny day no less. Glinda kept her cool, scanning the crowd for some indication of trouble. This was no earthquake.

A swirl of red smoke became a small tornado, and then _she_ was there.

There had never, ever been a time that Glinda could look at Elphaba and not feel like her entire world had tilted on its axis and accelerated. A rush of emotion drowned out all other thought but of her.

She had lost the healthy weight their last year at Shiz put on her. Her cheeks were nearly cavernous now, and her eyes set in a dark stain of sleeplessness.

This was the woman that had broken Glinda's heart. It had nearly been a year, but their fight felt like it had been only yesterday. Elphaba looked cruel, crouching there in her customary black, casually menacing the crowd in the same way she had during their school days. Back then, the threat was not followed up by terrorism and violence.

Now it was, but as Glinda stood there at the podium she didn't see the wicked witch that had become a rallying cry for the opposition. She saw Elphie - her Elphie - lashing out, bitter and scarred, desperation and obsession drawing lines across a face which had for so long been precious. Elphaba was utterly alone. Again.

The substance of the fight that had rent them apart fled Glinda’s mind completely. She took two tiny steps back, away from the podium, plotting her route to Elphaba through the cowering crowd. She could not plan any farther ahead - just to reach her - that would have to be far enough.

And then Elphaba opened her mouth. “The Wizard has you all fooled. If you were true supporters of the Animals, you would know that the Wizard is the top donor to this society.”

She paused and surveyed the crowd. Her eyes never once set on Glinda at all. “The same Wizard that has rolled back protections for Animals under rule of law. The same Wizard who has been pressing voting restrictions on the basis of identification, and pressuring the old professors out of school.” She tossed a meaningful look at Mr. Giles. “I'm warning you,” she said at last. “But that warning could soon become a threat.”

Glinda was close. She had made her way quickly through the crowd, and - as Elphaba raised her hand to teleport away - she followed Elphaba.

Glinda's magic was never as strong as Elphaba's, but it wasn't too hard to ride along the torrent of Elphaba's power. They'd done it a few times at school, Glinda's hand on Elphaba's shoulder, the other around her waist, spinning up and out and _away_ from their room, away from Shiz, into a world only imagined until those moments. The world after school, where Glinda and Elphaba would explore meadows and forests, and far distant village main streets, just two girls who cared about nothing except to be - together -

Their feet hit the ground and Elphaba spun, broomstick in hand, nearly toppling Glinda over with the abruptness of her movement. She towered over Glinda, and Glinda, for the very first time, was afraid of her.

“How dare you follow me here?” Elphaba snarled.

“Elphie - I -” Glinda burst into tears, which made it nearly impossible to answer Elphaba's question. Her chest heaved hysterically. She cast about the room.

Where was she? A circular tower with an open window that looked out on a desolate wilderness. The wind whipped around them, catching a few strands of Elphaba's hair and throwing them across her eyes, and catching Glinda's dress and nearly turning her to the side in its bluster.

The room was nearly bare of accoutrements, but she did see a familiar purple scrying stone, and a table with an hourglass. The sand was slipping through - nearly halfway finished with the hour - and when the wind died down Glinda could hear the grains of sand hit each other. It was like distant rain.

Glinda gasped and held her breath, and then she looked back at Elphaba. “Is this where you're living?”

“Not for long,” Elphaba spat out. “Now it's no longer safe. _Nowhere_ is safe.” Elphaba spun and paced away from Glinda.

“You're the one who's attacking people!” The words slipped out before Glinda could stop them. She would _argue_ with Elphaba? She reached out as if to catch the words before they reached Elphaba's ears.

“The Wizard will not let up! He is evil, Glinda, don't you see?” Elphaba turned back to Glinda, a glimmer of something in her eye, and Glinda sobbed again and threw her arms around Elphaba's shoulders, bringing their cheeks against each other, Glinda's lips against Elphaba's ear.

Elphaba smelled the same as she always had. Glinda forgot everything she might have otherwise said. “I miss you so, Elphie, it's like half of me has left and the other half can hardly see straight enough to stand.” She released Elphaba's shoulders enough to pull away to see her face, and Elphaba turned at the same time.

Their lips met. Almost an accident, almost like breathing, like drowning, like floating.

The kiss was long enough that Glinda was gasping at the end, unable to breathe through it because of the tears. When they parted, Glinda exhaled from the deepest part of her belly and it sounded like, “I love you.”

And then Elphaba had her against the wall, their hips locked as tightly as Glinda's dress allowed, her touch rough but not painful at the small of her back, around the back of her neck, eyes ravenous and studying Glinda's face.

Glinda gasped and said the words again. “I love you, Elphie, please, _please_ …”

Maybe it wasn't what Glinda was asking for, but Elphaba must have taken the prayer for one of lust.

Glinda spent time on the way Elphaba's body was different through the dress. Her fingers strayed across her, searching for a tie that cinched the midriff. Finding it, she moved up to the neck.

Elphaba made much shorter work of Glinda's dress. After pulling the dress over Glinda's head, she spun her around and began unlacing her corset with urgency.

Elphaba released her grip, but kept her in front of her once the corset was loose. Glinda imagined her expression - was she anticipating? Were her eyes dark, or bright like they'd always been during the moments stolen in their room? She remembered one lunchtime when Elphaba had found her in the hallways and led her back to their room. They had both nearly ran. There hadn't been time to disrobe. When Elphaba emerged from beneath Glinda's dress, she'd been shining with joy, and Glinda hadn't been able to stand up until the evening.

Weak with need. Weak with fulfillment. Was that how Elphaba saw her? If so, would she be wrong?

Glinda tried to turn, and Elphaba stepped up against her back, stopping the motion. Glinda's breath caught and her back arched. “Elphie,” she could only say. Her body was saying the rest.

Elphaba finally touched her stomach, fingers lighter in their touch, now. Glinda's skin rippled as Elphaba reached under the corset, pushing it up a little, and traced upward.

She couldn't reach her destination with the corset still on. Glinda gripped the top of it and pulled it over her head, and then she fell backward into Elphaba's arms. Elphaba nipped at her neck and held each breast nearly gently, her thumbs brushing Glinda's nipples, holding Glinda up without effort. The touches were electric, snapping through Glinda's body. Glinda imagined Elphaba's lips around her nipple rather than nibbling her neck. Or lower.

She threw back her head and moaned. “More, Elphie. Now. Now, please,” and Elphaba released one breast instantly, tracing directly down and slipping along her skin under the rest of her underwear.

She found Glinda without effort, stroking her once before breathing out roughly and releasing her breast to grip her hip. She pushed herself into Glinda's backside and dipped her fingers deeper, not quite inside, and Glinda cried out as she rubbed the side of her engorged clit. Rather than diving deeper, which might have been hard at this angle, Elphaba pulled her hand up and pressed the tips of her fingers against Glinda.

Glinda's belly dropped out and she nearly collapsed. Elphaba held her hip tightly and whispered, “I'm the only one who can do this to you.” Her fingers moved in tight circles against Glinda's most sensitive part.

It wasn't a question. “Yes,” Glinda answered anyway. “Only,” she managed, and then Elphaba released her and turned her around.

Glinda's vision was blurry, but even through the fog she could see that Elphaba was not shining. If anything she was darker now, more solemn than Glinda could ever have imagined. Elphaba had always been joyful when they touched each other.

Elphaba paused, just looking at Glinda, and Glinda tried to compose herself. Her throat was dry and raw, and her body ached and stung where it was so suddenly neglected.

The stare went on, and Glinda tried to cover her own chest with her arms, turning away. She burned with embarrassment and her body's uncontrollable responses. Now that she'd found out what was happening inside Glinda, was Elphaba going to reject her? Was she just sampling? Was it a… game? The Elphaba who had entered the Emerald City with Glinda last year would not have played with her.

“This isn't what you want,” Elphaba said. Her voice, always expressive, cracked now under the force of her conviction. “You don't want me. You are good, and I am - I am not.”

What transgression made Elphaba's eyes squint in pain like that? Glinda tried not to think - to remember the many pieces of news that had reached her ears since their fight, news of deeds that had restrained her just at the moment she had decided that she would find Elphaba and talk with her, over and over again.

“You are a different kind of good,” Glinda whispered. “Come here, my love.” When Elphaba hesitated, Glinda said, “When have I not wanted you? I have always wanted you.” She took the step to Elphaba, her feet cold against the stone floor, and slipped her hands around Elphaba's waist, holding perhaps too tightly. “This is all I want,” she told Elphaba. “I just want to be with you, wherever you are.”

Elphaba nodded and returned the hug, and then Glinda found the tie that fastened Elphaba's dress around her neck and loosened it. She eased the dress off Elphaba's shoulders, and it fell in a pool around their feet.

Her mouth tingled when she kissed Elphaba again. Her skin was exactly as soft as it always had been, but Glinda could feel bones jutting too. “Oh, Elphie,” she sighed, touching Elphaba softly. Elphaba's body trembled like a leaf in the wind.

It was too much. Glinda's hands drifted away from Elphaba's body to her hair, which was still bound and braided at her back. Glinda pulled off the binding and, lock by lock, unbraided Elphaba's hair. Elphaba stood there complacently, her eyes totally unreadable.

When her hair was loose around her shoulders, Glinda stepped back just an inch and whispered, “So beautiful.”

“There will be a day that you no longer look at me like this,” Elphaba said, eyes still blank.

“Don't say that.” What was Elphaba imagining that she would do to earn that?

“I suppose, at least, it is not _this_ day.” The last words were a growl. “In this moment you are mine.”

The next steps in the dance were just a blur. There was a cot Glinda had missed before, in a nook in the room. The material was rough against her back, and she could feel the hardwood distinctly through it - before she could feel nothing at all, except Elphaba’s tongue and lips between her legs. Glinda was aware of her own voice, rising in an unmistakable rhythm, and Elphaba’s answering moans, which Glinda could feel deeply inside her.

And then Elphaba paused. Glinda sobbed, “More,” and before she finished the word, Elphaba's fingers were begging for entry.

Glinda pressed her hips up into the touch, and Elphaba was inside her. It was inconceivable that she could have gone a year without this. There was nothing that could ever compare. Glinda could not breathe, and then she could not breathe enough, and then Elphaba began working harder into her and their sweat slicked together, raising faint wisps of smoke where they met.

“Don't stop,” Glinda begged. “Come here.” Elphaba lay her body on top of Glinda's, and Glinda held her tightly as she peaked and broke, weathering shocks that were followed by aftershocks, followed by fluttering.

Finally, Elphaba eased her fingers out of Glinda.

Glinda made a sound of protest, but she couldn't imagine continuing. “Too soon,” she whispered. She wiped her palms on the cot and ran her hand down the narrow, hard plane of Elphaba's back. “I need to have that longer. I need it _again_ ,” she breathed, and kissed Elphaba's neck with her lips sealed. “It's too good, Elphie.” She traced Elphaba's neck up to her earlobe, and took it delicately between her teeth.

Shivers ran down Elphaba's body, which Glinda took as an invitation to explore. She traced hollow curves along familiar paths, waiting to see if Elphaba would lay down for her.

Elphaba didn't, and Glinda stroked the inside of her thigh to test her.

Elphaba’s hips rocked forward, and Glinda finished the motion, finding Elphaba swollen and wet and so, so deep. She started with her first finger, and Elphaba closed her eyes and rocked, short and fast, gasping out.

She was going to be even faster than Glinda. Glinda let her finger slip partway inside again. Elphaba's motion made her clit nudge against the base of Glinda's finger. Her strokes became even faster, and Glinda gave up on penetration and let her finger fall where Elphaba needed her.

Elphaba moaned deeply, and Glinda remembered longingly the feeling of being inside when this happened. Not today - or at least, not right now. Elphaba's hips jerked one more time, and then she lowered herself down onto Glinda and shook so hard that Glinda started crying after a few moments. It was too intense.

“Elphie, it's ok. It's ok, baby,” Glinda barely whispered the term of affection. “Oh, I love you. Everything is ok.”

Elphaba was shaking her head, and she finally rolled partially off Glinda, freeing her. Glinda sat up and looked at her.

Tears steamed on her cheeks. Glinda started and dove for the blanket to pat the moisture off Elphaba's skin, and then she kissed her face over and over again, trying to stem the flow.

None of it worked. “I _love_ you, Elphie,” Glinda said. “I love you now, I loved you then, and I'm going to love you forever. You'll always have me. I promise. I'm never going anywhere. Now that I know where to find you, I'll always find you, until you stop hiding.”

“It's not that simple,” Elphaba managed. “We are - we are driven apart. I can't make you change your life, give up - give up everything but a few flying monkeys!”

So that was the problem. “The Wizard might still forgive you, Elphie -”

Elphaba's eyes opened in rage.

“That's exactly what I mean,” she said. Her voice still wavered, but the tears seemed to have stopped.

“We need to compromise,” Glinda said reasonably. She wasn't going to get into the same fight that had proven their undoing last year. Surely if she explained everything properly, Elphaba would finally listen.

“You mean grovel,” Elphaba spat. The tears were fading quickly. “That I will _never_ do.”

“We can make things change, but not by terrifying innocent citizens. We _need_ to make things change. But plotting the assassination of the Wizard is not the answer. We have to figure out what would make everyone happy, not just -”

“ _Happy?_ You think it's about being _happy_? This is life-or-death. People are literally being killed, or disfigured - or - this is what I was so afraid of.” Elphaba rested her head back, closing her eyes.

Glinda took the opportunity to steal a full-body glimpse of her. She was so beautiful, but - “Elphie, you need to eat more. I know you forget, but please - I mean -”

She wanted to say that she would bring Elphaba food. That instead of staring at the hourglass thinking, or frantically studying, Elphaba would be gently drawn into a nicely decorated dining-room, where the cook would have prepared a nice or perhaps minimally adequate meal, and they would be waited upon by at least a butler.

That was the life she had glimpsed through the cover of forest during their days of escape from Shiz. That was her Mecca. Not the exact life she was accustomed to, but - at least some kind of life, a life together.

“Elphie,” Glinda tried again. “I know this is an important thing. But - maybe it is not as important as -” She searched for the word to describe her Mecca. “As me.” Elphaba's eyes opened. “You don't have to give it up. Just give a little, tiny bit, enough that there is space for me.”

Elphaba sat up. “Can you be more specific?”

“I thought last year that perhaps when we graduated -” Elphaba hadn't, but whatever, “- we could buy a small house. In a village. I would buy it, and you could just stay there. A place where we could find decent help, help that would want to be there.” She couldn't help but cast a disdainful eye toward their current environs. “And we could just - carry on, you know…”

“You're staying with your parents,” Elphaba pointed out.

“Just temporarily,” Glinda told her.

“What of the fact that I am Oz’s Most Wanted?”

“That is - the problem.” Glinda tried to think about it, but her head hurt. She sighed and lay down at Elphaba's side. Their thighs touched, which felt so good that Glinda snuggled closer.

“I love you. I don't know what to do.” She sighed and nuzzled Elphaba's crooked nose. “Please tell me the answer.”

Elphaba hummed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently this is my new thing.

Glinda waited for Elphaba to come up with a solution to their problem.

She waited until she fell asleep, and then through a delightful tangle of bodies that in waking quickly turned into fierce copulation, like they were two mares in estrous that could not get enough. She was sore and unsatisfied when they finally stopped.

She waited as Elphaba prepared eggs for dinner - eggs! For dinner! - from the chickens she kept in a coop at the base of her tower. There was nothing but salt to go with them, and Glinda scarfed them down because, after all, she hadn't had any of the banquet and had been far too busy preparing to eat that morning.

She waited as Elphaba awkwardly toured her around the decrepit estate. “Here's the water closet,” Elphaba pointed out, adding, “Dennis only draws water from the well at night for the floors and to refresh the water closet. He dumps it at the stream in the back,” and Glinda couldn't help but follow Elphaba's gesture to a tiny creek. Everything was smaller than the words Elphaba used to describe it.

“Where are they now?” Glinda asked her, meaning the flying monkeys that were Elphaba's companions.

“I asked them to go east,” Elphaba told her. _To check on Nessa,_ Glinda realized. Was something wrong?

“All of them?” she probed gently.

“All but one,” Elphaba told her, but said no more.

Glinda waited as night encroached upon the increasingly uncomfortable cot. She watched Elphaba as the witch pulled out a tall bottle from the crowded shelves and stripped nude before her. A year ago, they had been schoolgirls in love, but watching Elphaba strip made Glinda realize that she was a girl no longer.

And Glinda - Glinda had matured as well. Never as bold and fearless as Elphaba, true, but she too was a woman now.

To her mother, being a woman meant running a household. She was just waiting for her to leave the estate and move into a husband's. She was befuddled by her lack of proposals from eligible candidates, but never pressed her.

Glinda knew better than that. As Elphaba poured oil from the bottle into her open palm and began applying it to her scalp, standing by a long bench, Glinda realized that regardless of what kind of solution Elphaba dreamed up, Glinda would not be moving back home. While this estate would never do, she did vicariously enjoy Elphaba's freedom, and longed for it in her own life.

Finally, Glinda pulled herself out of bed, slightly self-conscious in the nearly transparent nightdress she'd borrowed from Elphaba. She felt filthy, too, but how would she wash herself with no water and certainly no soap?

Maybe that oil would help. Elphaba faced away from her, straddling the long bench, but her movements slowed when she heard Glinda stand. Glinda pulled off the nightdress and stood behind Elphaba, reaching out with fingers that nearly trembled. Even hours after coming here, she could barely differentiate Elphaba from a dream.

She sighed when her fingers met flesh, and Elphaba sighed in answer. “Elphie,” she said, and it sounded like, _I love you._ She ran her fingers across Elphaba's shoulders and down her back, spreading the oil on her skin, and then she straddled the bench behind Elphaba and pressed her naked breasts into Elphaba's back.

Elphaba arched and her hand fell on Glinda's knee, smearing oil. Glinda pressed closer, relishing the slick of her nipples against Elphaba's skin. Her belly ached deeply, and she cut back a gasp and rubbed against Elphaba's back again.

Elphaba stood suddenly and got off the bench, turning to face Glinda. She sat back down and pulled Glinda's knees over her thighs, and Glinda pushed up off the bench to settle fully on Elphaba's lap.

Elphaba immediately focused on Glinda's breasts, which by chance or by design were directly in front of her face. She kept her hands around Glinda's backside as she took one nipple in her mouth. Glinda gasped and pushed her hips into Elphaba.

She contacted Elphaba's stomach and it felt so good that she pulsed again, wrapping her arms around Elphaba's head. Elphaba, for her part, kept her slippery hands tight around Glinda's hips and answered every smooth thrust.

Glinda said breathlessly, “I was just planning to help you bathe,” and Elphaba laughed shortly, muffled by Glinda's chest.

“Let’s plan for your assistance in this manner,” she started, and then Glinda directed her mouth to her other nipple and she was silent again, distracted by Glinda's body.

How lucky, Glinda thought vaguely. How lucky she was, to be able to just _do_ this, to want someone so wholly and to just _have_ her. It only took a few seconds to move from being apart to touching, and from touching to - whatever this was - love incarnate, love in flesh and in desperate meeting.

And then Elphaba shifted their hips and reached farther around Glinda to touch her wetness, and Glinda arched and drew her legs more tightly around Elphaba's thighs to present herself to Elphaba.

Elphaba was looking up at her and she was finally shining, her face bright with uncomplicated emotion. “How much?” she asked Glinda, and Glinda told her, “Everything you have.”

Elphaba probed at her entrance and Glinda bore down on her, pushing down until Elphaba's hand hit her own thigh, and Glinda had enough leverage to take her inside. Glinda's body opened, and she moaned loudly as she stretched to accommodate Elphaba’s fingers.

Elphaba’s hand was slick with the oil still, but it was barely a help - it barely made a difference at all, considering how wet Glinda was - but it seemed that Elphaba was trying to fit her entire hand inside her, or at least the four fingers. Glinda let up slightly and then pushed down again, loving the stretch, wishing only to take as much of Elphaba as Elphaba had to give.

She pushed down a third time, and this time Elphaba moved slightly inside her, curling. Glinda's eyes rolled back and her body spasmed in response, and Elphaba shifted her grip so that her other hand held Glinda's back securely.

They were wrapped completely around each other, Elphaba around Glinda's back and between her legs, and Glinda straddling Elphaba's lap, her arms around Elphaba's shoulders. Glinda _would_ hold Elphaba in the most intimate way. She'd hold her tightly and - take everything, until nothing separated them, until their flesh was permanently fused.

She pressed down again, and Elphaba curled again, and then Glinda couldn't stop riding her and would never try. _Yes._ It was a prayer, an anthem, an affirmation, deliverance in the form of a thorough fucking. Elphaba joined Glinda in her supplication. _Yes, baby, yes, more, harder, yes, yes._

Elphaba shuddered, and Glinda realized that her hips were moving, shadowing Glinda's movement. Glinda reached behind her own back and found Elphaba’s center, and Elphaba jerked and tightened like a vice around Glinda's body, helpless against the practiced movements of Glinda's fingers against her, unable to find leverage to do anything but drive her own fingers harder into Glinda.

Elphaba's orgasm felt like Glinda's release, until it _was_ Glinda's release, and Glinda laughed when they were finally still, licking the tips of her fingers which were slick and shining.

She was drained. “Oh,” she breathed, cupping Elphaba's face in her hands, rubbing her cheeks with her thumbs. “Oh, Elphie, let this never end.”

“Let this never end,” Elphaba echoed back to her. “Stay here, with me, Glinda. Stay, please stay.” Her eyes were wet.

Glinda went cold, and Elphaba closed her eyes and clutched her closer, laying her head between Glinda's breasts, the motion uncharacteristically innocent. Elphaba was never like this. In any other moment, it would have melted Glinda's heart.

But she'd been waiting for Elphaba to come up with a solution, and now perhaps it seemed that Elphaba did not intend to do so at all.

“Absolutely not,” she said tightly. She pushed Elphaba's shoulder, and Elphaba avoided her look. “I can't live _here._ There are rats, and monkey droppings. I have yet to find evidence that you have any food at all except eggs.”

Elphaba breathed out shortly. “I'll make it better. I'll - I promise, I'll - tomorrow I can make stew.” Her arms flexed around Glinda's back, still slick with oil.

 _“Stew?”_ Glinda seethed. She straightened her spine and tried to push Elphaba away again.

“There's no solution, Glinda,” Elphaba said miserably. “If there was one, don't you think I would have taken it already?”

“You're not trying!” Glinda finally managed to push Elphaba's hands off her. She stood. “You have to try, for me, just a little bit.”

“I am trying!” Elphaba said. She looked small and - what was the word? Thunderstruck. Lost?

“What have you done? _How_ have you tried?”

Elphaba didn't respond immediately. As she opened her mouth, a huge shape flapped and alit on the ledge of the still-open window. Glinda jumped and bolted to the cot, and Elphaba turned slightly.

The creature jumped from the ledge onto Elphaba, and Glinda screamed, pulling the light blanket up to try to shield herself.

“Ben,” Elphaba said, laughing. “Where have you been?”

Elphaba peeked around from behind the blanket.

The creature’s wings were folded back and it clung to Elphaba's torso. Without the wings it was much smaller, a miniature monkey. A baby?

The monkey screeched at her in response, and Elphaba cooed, turning with the monkey in her arms to the table. “You're cold,” Elphaba said, and Glinda could see that the monkey was, indeed, shivering.

Glinda approached them cautiously, offering the blanket to Elphaba. Elphaba gave her a strange look and took it, wrapping it around the tiny monkey.

And then she turned away from Glinda, and Glinda had to stop herself from following after them down the stairs of the tower. Her heart wrenched in her chest, and a bitter taste filled her mouth.

She pulled the nightdress back on and went back to the cot. The material stuck on the parts of her that were oily. She rubbed the dress idly where it stuck - her stomach, under her arms, the insides of her thighs - remembering that those were the places that her body had touched Elphaba's.

Elphaba. Her heart was blank, empty. It was a familiar feeling - the same feeling she'd gone to sleep with every night since they'd parted ways in the Emerald City.

Elphaba. Glinda tried to clear her mind, but it was of no use until Elphaba lay beside her on the cot. Glinda turned and wrapped her arms tightly around Elphaba's body, and only then did she find any peace.

She woke in the middle of the night and the cot was cold beside her. Moonlight shone through the open window, falling across the table and the bench, still slick with oil.

Elphaba was standing over her crystal at the table. The crystal was swirling red, unreadable from this angle, but Elphaba was entirely focused on it.

What was she scrying now, in the middle of the night? Glinda turned over and faced the wall, waiting until her misery faded back into sleep.

When she woke up fully again, the sunlight streamed in, painting her legs in brilliance. Elphaba was gone, but Glinda smelled something sweet and bread-like cooking.

She held her nightdress in front of her, hand clenched tightly, and walked down the dark stairs gingerly. The stone was cold under her feet. As she descended, the smell turned to the smell of burning.

She remembered where the kitchen was, at the base of the tower. As she suspected, that was where she found Elphaba.

Elphaba was leaning over a tin which was filled with burned pastry. She hadn't noticed Glinda.

So this was Elphaba trying. A burned pastry and a sleepless night. Glinda bit back a sob and ran back up the stairs.

She'd just leave. She'd put on the dress from yesterday and just - just -

“Glinda, wait!” Elphaba called from behind her.

“How could I have been so stupid?” Glinda wailed. She was winded already, and her breaths came out as choked gasps. She could barely find the uneven stairs in the dark of the tower. “After everything you said last year. How you'd never let anything get in your way…”

“You told me good luck!” Elphaba protested. She was barely winded and had already caught up to Glinda.

Glinda paused at the landing, leaning on the stone wall. It was so dark she could barely see Elphaba's face, let alone read her.

“The - the cake was just - I have been thinking all night about what we can do.” Elphaba paused, and when Glinda didn't respond she articulated forcefully, “I have been developing a plan.”

Glinda reluctantly followed Elphaba back up to the top of the tower. She sat across the table from Elphaba and waited for an explanation.

“First of all,” Elphaba said earnestly, “I think we need to agree upon objectives. The wizard is attacking animal rights in three main ways. The first is cultural. Maybe it wasn't even the wizard started this… I don't know.”

Glinda had no idea how Elphaba thought this line of conversation was helpful, but she had resolved to give Elphaba a chance. When Glinda still didn't speak, Elphaba said, “The second is by removing animals from positions of power, like professorships and governance. The third is by allowing experiments, magical or otherwise.” Elphaba paused again, and then she said, “Did you know that I freed the monkeys who live with me now from the Wizard?”

Glinda shook her head mutely, still waiting for evidence of a connection between this conversation and Glinda herself. Elphaba's brow furrowed. “Can you think of any other ways?”

With a question directed at her, Glinda stirred. “Well, the Animal Welfare Society has always supported animal basic rights in the legal system.” She wasn't sure if bringing up the Society would be a point for her, or against her, but nearly didn't care.

Elphaba smiled, though. “Great. So four ways, and you're right that one of the main objectives I'd like to pursue is related to legal rights.”

She sighed heavily and steepled her fingers. “I don't know how to affect cultural change.” Glinda thought, _Maybe avoid turning yourself into villain in the eyes of the public_. But she didn't say anything, at least not yet. An idea was beginning to form in her mind.

Elphaba said, “So that one is out. I've made a list of every Animal in all of Oz who has a position of leadership. I've been trying to reach out to each of them to offer my assistance, but many consider me a radical. Maybe you can assist me by taking this list in reaching out to each of these people.”

Glinda nodded cursorily.

“Maybe,” Elphaba said. “Actually, maybe what you said has more relevance, about legal rights.That's really what we're talking about, that these experiments have to be legal.” She was getting worked up. “But I’m no lawyer. I've spent - wasted! - my time on magical studies, which have barely had any relevance at all when it comes down to it.”

Glinda’s impatience got the best of her. “Elphaba. You know that most likely my family and all of the attendees at the fundraiser think that you kidnapped me?”

Elphaba raised an eyebrow. “You clearly followed me.”

“Not to them. You don't understand how people see you now. if you showed up at a courthouse they'd put you in chains... or worse.”

Elphaba's eyes flashed, but she was listening.

“You have pushed yourself into radical action, and closed off all other available routes. If you had just listened to me to begin with…” Glinda trailed off.

Elphaba stood and began pacing.

“The way I see it,” Glinda told her. “The very first problem that we need to work on solving is your public image. Otherwise, to be honest, every single thing on your list is something that I should do, and you should stay far away from.”

Elphaba looked up. “Except shutting down the experimentation labs.”

“They'll just find more animals, unless you can find a way to shut them down permanently. In the meantime, I'm afraid that you're doing far more harm than good in your campaign against the Wizard. Ozians have always loved him. And by saying that he is harming the Animals, when everyone has always been a little bit uncomfortable about Animals anyway… You're actively working against your very first objective.”

Elphaba was scowling, but nodding. “This is what I meant before.” She meant during their fight last year. “That we should work together. You know I've never been very good at…” she gestured helplessly.

“I know. And that's nearly all this is. This is a public education and information campaign that you are treating like a war.”

“So I need public endorsement. Like in school,” Elphaba added shyly.

Glinda shook her head. “Nobody will stand with you against the wizard as long as your politics are so radical.”

“It _isn't_ radical,” Elphaba said vigorously. “What's radical is dismantling the fabric of our society on the basis of a stupid prejudice. I stand for Oz. The wizard is not even from this land.”

“I know, Elphaba,” Glinda said gently.

“Your parents…” Elphaba said, as if it was a new idea. “Couldn't they…”

Glinda said, “Foster more supportive policies within their own jurisdiction, yes. But that's not going to look like what you want it to look like. And either way, you can't just stay here, an exile and an outcast.”

“What if we say that I am staying with you. That I've changed.”

Glinda sat back in her chair. “My mother would be harboring a fugitive. It would be embarrassing. She would be subject to questioning.”

Elphaba sat back down, looking up through errant strands of hair into Glinda’s eyes.

“I can ask my mother,” Glinda offered at last, and Elphaba frowned and leaned forward.

“Didn’t you say you’d buy your own house?”

“Yes, but…”

“Aren’t you Glinda the Good? Doesn’t that mean anything? Politically? _Tell_ your parents; don’t just ask them!”

“I - yes. And… Elphaba? My father has died.”

Elphaba sat back in her chair. “I’m so sorry, Glinda. I know how close you were.”

Glinda shrugged and looked down. She tried to find a flirtatious rhythm to ride out the conversation in comfort, but with Elphaba there was no defense. “Mother wants nothing to do with running the - the North.” It seemed odd that Elphaba would know the name of every Animal professor in Oz, and yet would only find out about Glinda’s father’s passing when Glinda told her.

“The North,” Elphaba said reflectively, and Glinda tried to differentiate between contemplation and hunger in her tone.

Glinda stood and walked to the chair she’d stored her own dress on, once she’d retrieved it from the floor. “I’d like some time,” she said finally. “I’d like to think.” Suddenly the shards of their plan seemed like a compromise on only Glinda’s part, and not Elphaba’s. She trembled as she touched the frills on the collar of her dress, imagining home.

“Write me,” Elphaba offered from behind her, voice flat and emotionless.

Glinda spun. _“Write me?_ Is that all you have to say?” Elphaba wouldn’t write her. Glinda would have to write. This was a rejection. This was a situation that would never in a million years have happened with any other suitor.

“You aren’t even a suitor,” Glinda said furiously. “You have not shown me that you can even _try_ to woo me. And sometimes a lady needs to be wooed. You won’t -”

Elphaba stood, rallying to the battle cry like she was born for it. “Is that what Fiyero has been doing? Wooing you?”

“What?” Glinda was taken entirely off-guard. “Fiyero’s family is an important ally to mine - we need -”

“Is that why you stood so close during the banquet? Because you are _allies?”_

“Yes!” Glinda yelped, on the defensive again and hating herself for it. “He is - You know what? I don’t have to justify myself to you. I don’t have to tell you - anything!” She breathed heavily, trying to exhale the pain through her throat. It felt like her breath should be black smoke, but as she exhaled her breath was transparent. “I asked you yesterday to compromise. I’m realizing that the only one here who’s even considered compromise is me. How did you so easily twist this to your advantage?”

As Elphaba opened her mouth, Glinda interrupted her. “You’re - I never realized it before, but you’re a manipulator. You know how to turn - to use -” her body shook and, unbidden, the memory of herself astride Elphaba imposed itself on her. She remembered how she drove herself into Elphaba’s hand, how badly she’d wanted what Elphaba had offered her. She remembered reaching behind, her breasts jiggling from the residual movement of Elphaba’s hips into her body, and what it looked like when Elphaba orgasmed, how Glinda had held her with her left arm so that she’d say upright, how easy it had been to follow her. Was it all a game?

“You’re using me,” Glinda said, and then she pulled her wand from her dress and spun it. A moment later, she was bedraggled, in a stolen dress that was soaked in olive oil, but… home.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

“You can't be serious,” Fiyero said. His back was turned to her as he served out their drinks.

Glinda sighed forlornly. The drawing-room which had for so many years been filled by her father's presence seemed almost empty now. Only a few lamps were lit, and they cast long shadows in the dark of evening. Even the furniture seemed shabby and old-fashioned, belying Glinda's memories of a glamorous childhood spent entertaining guests and dignitaries from throughout Oz.

Fiyero was the only thing that seemed to glow. He was wearing a linen shirt, and as he turned from the table, Glinda noticed a flush in his cheeks. It must be the amaretto, Glinda thought.

She accepted another glass from him with thanks, and he slouched low in the seat across from her.

“Surely if she had the option to rejoin society, she'd take it,” Fiyero said.

“She thinks she's in a war,” Glinda told him.

“She always has,” Fiyero agreed. “But she's always been reasonable, don't you think?”

“Yes,” Glinda said. “Except she doesn't care that she's an exile. I don't think she thinks her situation is miserable at all. She told me to _write her.”_ Her eyes filled with tears.

Fiyero took a deep sip of the amber liquor. “Do you think she'd listen to me?”

“No,” Glinda said. “Anyway, she said she'd move here.” She imagined the scene from earlier that day. The Uplands had hosted a small luncheon that had turned into an in-depth discussion of jurisdiction and then, inevitably, had turned sour on the subject of Animal rights. Fiyero had spoken strongly about the availability of funding from the Tigelaar family for any institutions that discriminated against Animals, and nobody said anything overtly negative about that, except to say that it was a policy impossible to actually enforce.

So Glinda had said that the Uplands would have the same policy. “It's a stance against discrimination, at least,” she'd said, and Fiyero had turned in irritation back to her as if she'd neutralized his position. Maybe she had.

She imagined Elphaba lurking in the drawing room during _that_ debate. Silent or not, Elphaba would have completely shifted the tone.

Nobody would have been able to say half of what they'd said. Elphaba was too far out on the fringes of the noble class. She would always be an observer - a keen and unabashedly critical one, at that. And that's what she wanted to be. Hers was now a household name because she was an extremist, not a ruler.

And that hunger in Elphaba's eye when she found out Glinda was now the de facto ruler in the North… Elphaba was unrelenting. She did not belong at the table with Glinda and the other policymakers of Oz.

Glinda sighed and stood. Her head spun slightly, which was odd because she'd had barely anything to drink. She moved to the table and poured herself some water.

“Why hasn't she?” Fiyero finally prompted. “Moved here, then? Isn't there plenty of room?”

“There is,” Glinda agreed. “Don't you think that might be a… problem?”

“Politically?” Fiyero shrugged loosely. “I think it would be a good thing! We really need to stand together right now.”

“What if she pulls another of those pyro stunts? While she's staying here? They'll come from the Emerald City and arrest her. And I can't stop her.”

Fiyero shrugged again, rolling his neck. “I think her stances need to be normalized, and the first step is getting support from people like your mom and my dad. She's just lighting things on fire to try to get the kind of attention that these issues deserve. If they already had that attention…”

“You're giving her too much credit,” Glinda told him. Her head was still spinning. She wondered if she was nauseous, and everything went black.

When she came to, her ears were ringing, and bright spots danced before her eyes, making it hard to recognize Fiyero even though his face was just inches from hers. He was holding her head and shoulders off the ground, and she was sitting on the ground.

“What?” she managed.

“You fainted,” her told her. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head, but the ringing and spots had already begun to subside. “Why?” she asked him.

“Why, indeed?” he said. “Might you have been poisoned?”

She shook her head and sat up. He kept his hand on her back, offering his other hand to help her stand but actually lifting her to her feet instead.

She felt secure in his arms, and dizzy again with the sudden motion. She draped her arms around his shoulders, and he kept his hand on her back. “I am so lost,” she whispered. “It has been only a few weeks, but it feels interminable, like this endless year has been. I just want her back.”

Fiyero was silent, and tense, until she released him. His face was unreadable in the dim light.

“She was your close friend,” he said finally. “But you can find another, I'm sure.”

Glinda shook her head, and took her seat again. “You don't understand.” She and Elphaba had not exactly been open - that is to say, they held hands and went to every party together, and sometimes danced to the slowest songs with their foreheads touching - but they did not kiss in public, and Glinda had not announced publicly that she would never, ever marry - although she had said on more than one occasion that Elphaba would be coming with her to her parents’ estate - and she would tell anyone who listened that Elphaba was absolutely the only thing that she, Glinda, required in order to live.

But Fiyero must not have understood, because there he stood, throat working soundlessly. “I'm saying that you must move on, Glinda,” he said finally. “Friendships change, and break. New ones form. You have to stop holding everyone and everything at arm’s length, or you're never going to learn to live again. And once you are living, maybe she will learn to see you for the treasure you are, rather than someone who was given to her for free and with no effort on her part whatever.”

“That's not fair,” Glinda snapped. “We have only ever been equal.”

“Perhaps,” Fiyero said. “But I can see that you want her here. Why, then, is she not here? You said she offered to come, but she must have changed her mind.”

“She did not. I have not invited her.” Glinda tipped her chin and looked away from him, not caring that the look must be petulant.

“Then it is her dogged insistence on radicalism that is stopping you, so it is still her fault. I'm gonna go talk to her.”

 _“No,”_ Glinda said again. “I will not go begging.” _She told me to write her._

“She hasn't done anything too radical since your visit with her,” Fiyero pointed out.

“As I well know,” Glinda said, and she turned her head forward to look back at him. “Should three weeks be proof of a lifetime of change?” it was an exaggeration. 

Fiyero looked triumphant, and a little awed. "So you would tame the Wicked Witch,” he said softly, and Glinda shuddered.

“Don't call her that.”

“Maybe wicked isn't so bad.”

“You're the one who blamed her for not coming here,” Glinda returned. “You said she wasn't appreciating what we have, and you told me to move on from her so that I might draw her back. Now you're saying she's not to be tamed. Does that mean that there's no hope for me, then?” She searched his shadowed face for answers. She wasn't angry anymore. It felt like she could finally talk to someone who knew what she was talking about, someone who knew Elphaba. Someone who, perhaps, had been more perceptive than she'd initially given him credit for, but nonetheless seemed to give up on a stance the moment she'd responded to it. He was testing her, she knew, a careful verbal sparring match that left Glinda holding both swords but no answers. “You said that I gave myself to her without asking anything in return. Maybe this is her chance to give something up for me.”

“I don't want either of you to be hurt,” Fiyero said finally. “I do care about both of you, and it looks like to me that she's hurt you.”

Glinda nodded, beating down a wave of misery. “I am tired,” she said, after the misery faded into a dull ache. “I will see you for breakfast?”

Fiyero agreed, but he wouldn't leave her side until she was close enough to lean on the bed in her room, in case the dizziness came back. Glinda was secretly grateful.

She tossed and turned in bed for hours, until she lit the lamp by her bedside and pulled out the crumpled letter from under her pillow. In places, it was illegible, the ink splotchy and crusted in the brine of tears. It read:

 

_Glinda -_

_The dearest and closest object to me -_

_The wildest passion that has ever gripped my heart -_

_The only reflection of myself that is both true and beautiful -_

_In my dreams, you cared to follow me as I left. For weeks, every morning, I realized anew that you hadn't, until finally you did._

_Do you remember the last summer at school, when I wrote you every day, and you were so busy that you wrote your response at the end of my letter, teaching me to only select the longest of papers, and write in the smallest of scripts, so that I would garner the attention I craved? And do you remember that you only learned to write bigger and not more? Yet I have every letter here. I have kept them and I do not want to admit that I do read them._

_It is because I can't sleep without the sound of you that I do not sleep. No bed is mine that does not have you in it, Glinda. It feels like nothing is mine that you have not looked upon, or touched, or loved. Everything new is not shared, so I hate everything new. I wish that time would stop in the moment of your smile, and never start again, so that I could be frozen in love with you forever._

_I know that you think I have not tried. So I will keep trying, I suppose, until you do. I do not know how else to please you._

 

The note was unsigned. It started roughly and ended sourly, or else it didn't end at all. It had no predecessors, or sequels. Glinda had written at the end of the letter, in the tiny sliver of space that remained:

_I suppose now I am the one who must learn to write small-ly._

She wasn't sure if that was the word. Besides, she did not want to send this letter back to Elphaba.

She wished she'd kept Elphaba's letters. She had never imagined that she would want to re-read the cramped handwriting and pointless anecdotes from Elphaba's tiny and drab existence outside of Shiz. Well, maybe she didn't, after all. They were never as sweet or desperate as this letter was. _Everything new is not shared, so I hate everything new._ Elphaba was falling apart.

Glinda crumpled the note and held it tightly in her hand, and then she squeezed her eyes shut and kissed her own fist. “I hate everything new, too,” she whispered. “I hate everything that isn't you. Let's freeze together in a smile, Elphie. Let's freeze today, and tomorrow, and forever. This isn't a game, Elphie. You could die. You have to stop. I can't lose you forever, because then there will be absolutely nothing left in the world that I love.”

She sighed. “Just come here, my love.” And Elphaba came.


	4. Chapter 4

She was a whift of smoke on the ground, and then she was naked in Glinda's bed and they were wrapped around each other, green and pink. At first it was a contest to draw their skin as close as it could be, and then Elphaba found a way to surround her taut green with Glinda's slick pink and Glinda was playing a long game, pulling their bodies apart when Elphaba began exerting herself, drawing her close when she pulled away, pulsing slowly and squeezing herself around Elphaba's finger until Elphaba flipped her over and pinned her down, a hand on her hip like she planned to trap Glinda beneath her. Glinda reached between their bodies and trapped Elphaba instead, and when Elphaba grunted and thrust rhythmically deeper, Glinda turned her over and slowed the thrusts of her own fingers with the hope that she could keep touching Elphaba for hours, and stop only when the sun caught their interlocked skin in its purifying rays.

Elphaba twitched and closed her eyes, and Glinda felt every ripple of her orgasm with rapt attention, holding Elphaba carefully with one hand splayed across her breastbone.

And then Elphaba moved inside her, and Glinda pinned her hips between her thighs and rode her with quick, tight thrusts. Elphaba kept her eyes closed, but her hips met each of Glinda's thrusts, until Glinda hovered over her thumb and, in three delicate touches, Elphaba brought her beyond their bodies and into heaven.

 

Glinda woke slowly, Elphaba a familiar weight across one of her thighs. At first Glinda thought they were back in their old dorm room. When she recognized her room at her parents’ estate, she thought Elphaba must be visiting, as they had always planned.

When she realized the truth, her head spun. She squirmed out from under Elphaba and availed herself of the water closet, wondering what she would do now.

She shouldn't have been surprised that Elphaba stayed. She should have realized that welcoming her into her bed meant - well, it meant that she was here now. She'd probably have to ask Elphaba to leave, if she wanted her to go.

Glinda sat on the edge of the bed and traced a delicate pattern along the bones of Elphaba's back. Her skin was deeply green, and the light from the window made her glisten. Glinda wished she had turned on her back, so Glinda could trace the shining skin along the bottom of Elphaba's breast and along her ribs, the concavity of her stomach and hips.

She wanted to dive right back into Elphaba. She hadn't wanted to stop last night, and she only wanted more, now. What was it that drove Glinda's desire? Was it only Elphaba's pleasure?

She knew it wasn't. This wasn't a selfless desire to please. It was the most selfish desire in Glinda's heart - the desire to own. To own everything. To have Elphaba in every sense of the word. Perhaps it was so appealing because it was so impossible.

“Just one day in the Emerald City,” she whispered, tracing Elphaba's hip with her fingertip, remembering a brief moment when it seemed that she _could_ have Elphaba.

Glinda continued, tracing long lines across Elphaba's back. “All the towers are glass and green, a sea of green, so bright it would burst your eyes if you didn't protect yourself. The ground is slippery beneath your feet, not a living thing in sight except the masses of people. They surge across streets, down the avenues, masses of people like ants or rats or anything but what they really are.

“We're there together. We have sights in mind, but no time except right now - so we just go wherever we find ourselves in front of, and spend all the money in my allowance plus all that you were given by Morrible, plus some more and I never knew where you got it, only that you had it when it seemed that all the money was gone. Do you remember, Elphaba?”

“The air was alive with magic and light,” Elphaba supplied. Her voice was husky and deep, and Glinda startled when she spoke, still face down on the bed. “Every plane of the city lit your face, and made you ever more the angel. I was confident that the Wizard would take you instead. But I never imagined entering his presence without you. If it was you he took, at least I thought -” Elphaba swallowed, and turned to Glinda with misery written into the lines of her face. “This used to be a good memory. I don't know when it turned so dark.”

Glinda caressed her face. “I remember you the night before. Do you remember - on the balcony, with that sheer robe on? It was the lightest green. You should wear color more.”

Elphaba's face cleared. She curled into Glinda's lap, and Glinda rubbed her head delicately.

“Should I go?” Elphaba asked Glinda.

“Stay,” Glinda whispered.

“Did you ask your mother?”

“I don't care. We probably won't see her all day. Let's just stay in bed.” Glinda remembered that they had guests. Fiyero, and a few other visitors who'd stayed too late to go home yesterday. “I'll tell them I'm sick.”

“All right,” Elphaba agreed. “Won't you keep rubbing my head?” she asked after a pause, and Glinda did, feeling a rush of excitement pass through her. She loved when Elphaba told her how to please her. Maybe it was because it was the only time she was certain that she could please Elphaba at all.

She trailed her fingernails down Elphaba's side, and Elphaba's skin went up in goosebumps. So she kept going, one hand on Elphaba's head, the other exploring the rest of Elphaba's body. Elphaba arched her back into Glinda's touch, and Glinda sighed, aware of how wet her own body was, even just from touching Elphaba.

But Elphaba stayed complacently laying there, her head in Glinda's lap. They hadn't yet kissed. Glinda put her hand on Elphaba's breast, and then closed her fingers around Elphaba's nipple, and Elphaba moaned and dipped her hips. Her legs were closed.

“Imagine if there were two of me,” Glinda whispered. “The other one would start at your legs and work her way up your body. She'd spoon you from behind, and you could grind into her. You'd be able to feel her nipples, hard against your back.”

Elphaba whispered, “I'd turn you over and make your every wish come true.”

Glinda tutted. “Me and the other me - we only want your pleasure. I would come down in the bed,” and she traced the place on the sheets that she would go, “and trap you between us, so that you were not able to move except to touch one or the other of me.”

Elphaba shivered. “I would fuck you so hard -” she started.

“First, the other me would hold your hips and breast.” Glinda demonstrated with each hand, making her belly meet Elphaba's face. Elphaba turned her head and nipped Glinda's skin, and Glinda felt the pain as pleasure. She breathed out, arching, rubbing herself inadvertently a little on the bed. It was exquisite.

She squeaked, “Then, I would -” and Elphaba chuckled deeply. Glinda withdrew, sitting back up, her fingers tingling along Elphaba's side.

“You couldn't resist me. If I tried to fuck you, you'd melt under my fingers.” Elphaba turned on her stomach, and then sat slightly up, cupping Glinda's face in her hands. “You're mine.”

Glinda lay back as Elphaba pushed her down, sliding upward between her thighs, her hips tight against Glinda's softness. Glinda arched her back and moaned, giving in to Elphaba's power.

Before an hour had passed, they were walking to the kitchens, feet bare and hands intertangled. Glinda was hungry, and newly fearless. Elphaba always made her more brave.

Her mother found them there while they ate cold bread and cheese. Ratted out by a servant, which Glinda knew would happen.

“My roommate from Shiz,” Glinda introduced Elphaba. “She was delayed yesterday, and came in late.”

Glinda's mother sized Elphaba up, and Elphaba stood completely still, unflinching. “Elphaba,” Glinda continued. “This is my mother, Lady Upland.”

Elphaba curtsied shallowly. “A pleasure,” she whispered, just barely loud enough to be heard.

“Welcome,” Glinda's mother told Elphaba, and Glinda sighed in relief. So it would be a private scolding - her mother wouldn't call the butler. “Glinda has spoken of you without cease. It is good to finally meet you.”

“You, as well,” Elphaba returned. She was tense, stock-still.

“I was not certain that you were the same witch that has been taking the headlines in the news,” Glinda's mother said, somewhat harshly. Glinda cursed internally, and cast a warning look at Elphaba. “It seems that you must be.” _Water can melt her,_ Glinda remembered one headline. _Green as a snake - she can hide among us wearing our skins!_ The second less true than the first.

Elphaba just shrugged. “I have not seen the news lately,” she said.

“You should take care in these parts,” Glinda's mother told her. “The Wizard has agents everywhere. He prefers to send his guard to every major event. Hoping perhaps to catch you, I expect.”

“I'm sorry to hear that your parties are being disrupted,” Elphaba said ironically. She tipped up her chin, and her eyes flashed. Glinda cringed again.

“It is no trouble to _us,”_ Glinda's mother told her. “But you should be careful.”

“I am not afraid of the Wizard,” Elphaba told her.

Glinda grabbed her arm to tow her away. “I just realized - we have an appointment with Fiyero.” Glinda's mother watched them go, looking too thoughtful for Glinda's comfort.

“I'm not the only one the Wizard is hunting,” Elphaba told Glinda when they'd rounded the corner.

“Shut up, Elphaba,” Glinda told her. “Just shut up.”

“Did I make a bad impression?” she asked.

“Stop being funny,” Glinda told her.

“I'm really asking,” Elphaba said, and Glinda tossed a look at her. She did look a bit bashful.

Then she said, “Is Fiyero really here?”

Glinda sighed. “Yes. I am sure he's in the garden.”

He was exactly where she thought he'd be, practicing some poses with a look of great attention in the precise center of the courtyard garden. He jumped half a foot when he saw Elphaba, and drew them both indoors. “The Wizard’s got spies,” he scolded them.

Glinda said, “If you don't watch yourself, I'll begin to expect that you're one of them.”

But he had eyes only for Elphaba. “Where have you been? Are you all right? I tried to find you, but never could.”

A spike of jealousy entered Glinda's heart. “I found her easily enough,” she informed them.

Elphaba ignored her. “Did you hear that the Wizard has banned Animals from all the parks in the Emerald City?”

“Yes, but I am far more concerned - did you know -”

“The cages in Munchkinland?”

“The fences -”

“I know!” Glinda could barely tell who was talking, let alone what they were saying.

And then Fiyero said, “But what should we _do?”_

Elphaba turned to Glinda. “Glinda has a plan,” she told him. And as they walked to her father's study, Glinda outlined what she could remember of their conversation in the tower weeks ago. She'd told Elphaba to be less radical. Elphaba was trying. Now, maybe, it was Glinda's time to make good on her own promises.

None of the other guests showed. Although Fiyero did not leave them alone all day, it was not a bad day. Elphaba drafted a letter for Glinda to send to the list of influential Animals, and Fiyero added a few more to the list. They'd have a convention, Glinda decided. She'd invite them to the Uplands’ estate over the course of a week in the summer. Elphaba loved the idea.

In the evening, they played croquet and Fiyero drank too much wine. Glinda had only a sip of Elphaba's. She thought probably she had a stomach cold, or something of that sort; the smell of the wine turned her stomach.

That night, Glinda dreamt of a girl that looked like Elphaba, with sharp features and black hair. Her skin was ivory-white, and she called Glinda “Mother.”


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, Glinda woke Elphaba early to sneak to her own room before they were all called to breakfast. Nobody had challenged Glinda's story about Elphaba arriving late that night, but there was no reason to be utterly obvious. One night in a shared bedroom could be an innocent sleepover, but more than one might draw attention.

Glinda remembered the first winter break at school. She'd been so terrified that her parents would find out what she and Elphaba had done that she skipped home and went directly from Shiz to a resort with Pfannee, breaking her mother's heart. Her father had a simpler solution than tearful letters - he just showed up at Shiz one day in the next semester. He didn't intuitively sense that Glinda, unchaperoned in the safety of her dorm room, had been despoiled. To him, she was still the innocent maiden who'd left his home six months before. Glinda, relieved, faked sick for two weeks to return home with him and visit her mother.

Now, it didn't seem to matter if Glinda was despoiled or not. Well - it could matter if she ever found herself in the position of needing to marry - but she shuddered to even consider the possibility. It would be a political marriage, if anything, and she would be clear with her future husband that no physical affections went along with the match, and that he should expect no heirs. What man would marry her under such terms?

Given that, did it really matter what she allowed Elphaba to do with her body?

After Elphaba left that morning, Glinda was too awake to nap before breakfast. She went to her desk and looked at the invitation Elphaba had drafted for her the day before. The light of a new day brought doubts - what would it mean, to invite the Animals here? Even at the beginning of their time at Shiz, it had been challenging for Animals to move freely. These Animals would be booking train tickets with the Uplands’ estate as their destination. It was possible that they would need to show Glinda's letter to be allowed to board the train. That meant that they were effectively traveling under the Uplands’ blessing. And, sure, one or two Animals was nothing - but twenty? Thirty? It would warrant attention, and not just from the Wizard. Glinda could be sacrificing a good amount of political capital for this.

Perhaps that should be the least of Glinda's worries. Political capital, in times like these? And with a fugitive from the law moving freely about their estate - someone who had actually committed acts of terrorism, unlike the academics and nobles Glinda would be inviting… Elphaba took a far larger toll on her reputation - and virtue - than anything these poor Animals might do.

She remembered Dr. Dillamond, who had disappeared shortly after being fired at Shiz. What had become of him? He had been struggling to speak, in those last days. He had taken his research with him, something that Elphaba had encouraged and then bitterly rued. She'd hoped to get him reinstated, once she talked with the Wizard. She'd thought the research belonged with him, but wished later she'd made copies of his findings herself.

He wasn't on the list Elphaba and Fiyero had written up. She'd ask Elphaba, Glinda resolved.

In the meantime, she’d try to make the morning productive. She sat down and wet her quill to begin copying Elphaba's letter.

A loud crash sounded from afar. Strange enough, but of itself it wasn't Glinda's problem.

Then she heard shouting, and sprung to her feet. She threw a thick and obscuring robe over her thin nightdress and ran down the stairs and along the side corridor to the foyer.

Three men in crisp green uniforms were marching across the large room. They were being bodily blocked by the butler, who was standing by himself in the middle of the room, hands outstretched as if to fend the police off.

The crash had been a grand clock. It lay face-down on the ground, with shattered glass a halo around it.

As Glinda assessed the situation, the door to the rest of the house opened and two maids came rushing through, fully dressed.

“What is happening here?” Glinda projected her voice over the men’s voices, and they all stopped and looked at her.

“Breaking and enter-” the butler began, and he was interrupted with the policeman whose advance his outstretched hand had delayed.

“Harboring a -” the policeman bellowed.

Glinda said, “You are on private property, sir.”

The butler’s hand dropped off the policeman's chest, and Glinda marched directly to them. She glimpsed in the corner of her eye that the front door to their house was actually open.

“You are welcome _only upon our invitation to enter,”_ she told them sharply, and the lead police cast a glance at the other two. “Leave immediately, and your indiscretion will not reach the Wizard's ears.”

The policemen began backpedaling toward the door. She had correctly deduced that they were acting independently, and not under orders from the Wizard. They must have hoped to barrel through the house staff and find Elphaba without Glinda's intervention.

Some part of Glinda had been expecting this, but as she slammed the front door in their faces, bile filled her throat. Her head spun, and she rested her face on her outstretched arm for a moment and tried to breathe and swallow the nausea. She was just put off by the abrupt and militant invasion, she told herself. It was jarring, and… she had a stomach cold.

When she'd regained control, she turned to the house staff. Two more maids along with an unassigned elderly manservant had appeared - nearly their entire staff, absent the cooks.

“James,” she said, addressing the butler. “You're a hero, truly. Thank you.”

“They were coming for her,” he said quietly. The room was still and silent. The sky was gray through the tall windows, dawn breaking in slight degrees in the gloom of early morning.

“Yes,” Glinda whispered. “Thank you for putting them off, for now.” She surveyed their somber and plain faces. “I rely upon each and every one of you, every single day of my life.” It was the only way she could think to tell them something they already knew.

The lead housekeeper tutted suddenly, drawing attention away from Glinda. “What shall we do with this clock, Miss Galinda?”

“Send it away for repair,” Glinda said, waving her hand and moving to the side door. It was enough of a dismissal that the rest of them stirred as she exited.

It was important to give the servants space to gossip. The Unnamed God knew that half of her life, the only people she'd known beside her parents were the house staff. And oh, they loved to talk.

She met her mother for breakfast alone, explaining that Elphaba was "Still recovering from the long journey." She then endured a long and icy breakfast, which is not what she'd hoped for but not as bad as it could be. Glinda sensed that her mother was just waiting to call the housekeeper.

The housekeeper was the woman closest to her Ama growing up, and just as elderly as Ama had been. Glinda and her mother waited as she made her delicate way to Glinda's mother's study, where her mother made every stringent effort to make the old mother feel responsible for the betrayal of the houses’s trust in keeping Elphaba there.

Glinda said nothing. Everyone present knew that it was most likely that one of the visitors from yesterday would have spread the news. Everyone knew that it was only a matter of time; that if nothing was done, ten times that number of police would show up at their door the next day.

After that, she knocked on Elphaba's door to wake her.

Eventually, she realized that nobody was in the guest room at all. She spent a few hours that day with Fiyero drafting the letters to the Animals and hoping. They posted the letters that night. James ran them into town, and returned with a tart that Glinda shouldn't have recognized, but did.

The next morning, a platoon of the Wizard's military police knocked down their door, and Glinda and her mother gave them retroactive welcome. The police tore every inch of the estate apart, leaving devastation in their wake. It was only that afternoon that the news reached them that the Wicked Witch had struck again, this time in the Emerald City itself. 

It was hard to read through the propaganda, but it seemed that Elphaba had loosed all the horses in the Wizomania parade, and set the carriages on fire. Two elderly nobles from a house in the North had died in the attack, which had happened midday the day before. 

Glinda and her mother sat silently together that night, both pretending to read and missing Glinda's father, who would have had an answer.


	6. Chapter 6

When Glinda opened her bedroom door that night, Elphaba was sitting at her desk waiting.

Glinda shut her door firmly and then, as Elphaba stood in greeting, she drew her hand sharply across Elphaba's cheek in a slap.

Elphaba flinched away. “I was -” she began.

“You killed people yesterday,” Glinda said. Thankfully, she didn't feel at all like crying. “You're a terrorist, Elphaba, and I have given you every possible opportunity to redeem yourself, which you have tossed away without thought to the consequences.”

“Gerald flew for days to -”

“You don't get to explain,” Glinda cut her off again. “Nothing would excuse this, Elphaba. Nothing.”

After that, she stood stiffly, huffing and looking at Elphaba. There was a foot of space between them. The shape of Glinda's hand stood out darkly on Elphaba's cheek.

“You won't tell me that you'll stop this?” Glinda asked finally.

“The old Captain of the guard was one of the horses in the parade. The entire guard has been dissolved, and turned into packhorses. They're caged, and voiceless! I had to lead them somewhere safe. The noblest of Animals, Glinda, and he would turn them into slaves.”

“Nothing is an excuse for murder. And you said that my plan was right - that we could make more progress if we tried not to alienate everyone. Deadly terrorist attacks are the opposite of my plan.”

Elphaba stood straighter. “Maybe we have to work at the same time, but on different goals.”

“Then I will not have you in my house.”

“Then _I_ will not -” Elphaba said heatedly, and then paused. Her eyes softened. “Glinda, I had meant to tell you… Do you remember? The last time we lay together.” Glinda did remember. When she’d tried to seduce Elphaba by narrating a fantasy of two Glindas, and Elphaba had shrugged the fantasy off and instead, casually taken Glinda.

Glinda turned away from Elphaba and walked to the window, as far away as she could get without leaving the room.

Elphaba kept talking behind her, and did not follow. “I said you were mine, but what I really meant was that you are the only one for me. That I do not need to imagine anything but to touch you - “

“And I, to touch you,” Glinda said darkly. Pain lanced across her abdomen, which she ignored. She looked across the dark gardens, to the other side of the courtyard. The servants’ lights were still on. James’ tart had not gone home last night, and Glinda glimpsed the two of them dancing in the uncertain light of the lanterns outside the kitchens.

She wondered if that was what romance was. She wondered if she was irreparably ruined by her own erstwhile pursuit of Elphaba. That wasn’t romance - it was a crush - promptly attended to, as all of Glinda’s needs were, and now a stale habit like washing her face at night.

Fucking Elphaba at night. And then waking in the morning to attend to their separate businesses. Could Glinda tolerate a life that looked like that? One separate, but together enough that Elphaba would always maintain her grip on Glinda's heart?

Glinda heard the creak of a floorboard behind her as Elphaba approached. She imagined leaning back into the comfort of Elphaba's touch. She was suddenly bone-weary. It would be easy enough to take the scrap that Elphaba offered.

“You need to leave,” Glinda murmured, turning to Elphaba. Elphaba's eyes were dark in the lamplight, solemn and as strange as they had ever been.

Elphaba was both familiar and alien. Even now, she might have been a visitor from the moon; as much as her skin was precious and soft, it remained - well - green.

Glinda put her hand on Elphaba's neck and rubbed her thumb along her jawbone. “I love you,” she whispered, and then she stepped into Elphaba's arms.

Elphaba held her tightly. “I'll never forget you,” she said through clenched teeth. Glinda remembered how she'd cried, the day Glinda followed her to the remote castle that was likely still her home. Nothing had changed, even if it seemed like it had for a time.

Elphaba would not change for her. Glinda buried her face in Elphaba's shoulder and inhaled her, clutching her with fists against Elphaba's chest. “I love you,” Glinda said again. “And you have never loved me.” It was no revelation. She looked up at Elphaba. “You didn't even leave a letter for me when you left.”

“A servant would have found it before you did,” Elphaba said.

She wasn't wrong, but Glinda only paused a moment before continuing. “You won't change and you won't slow down for me. You'll keep marching forward, and if I fall behind you'll barely notice at all. You barely care if I live or die.”

“This is not about you, Glinda.”

“No,” Glinda agreed. “It has never, ever been about me. It has only ever been about you. Your letter might have said sweet things, but they were not about me, Elphaba. You only care about me as long as I am an accessory to you.”

“That's not true,” Elphaba protested. “And I do care for you. More than anyone in the world. I wish that you _were_ the only thing in the world, Glinda. But you're not, and I can't forget it, as much as I wish that I could.”

“Let someone else fulfill your mission, then,” Glinda begged.

“I have come to realize that nobody else can,” Elphaba told her. Elphaba's lips were pulled down into a frown, or maybe the beginnings of tears.

Glinda kissed the sides of her mouth carefully, delicately. She poured the ache in her heart into tenderness. Elphaba was dry and cracking, and Glinda would love her until she was flush again. If only Glinda's love could accomplish such a feat, because it was one thing that would never run out. She'd seen Elphaba transform under her fingertips, turning from green and strange to glowing. She tried to make the change happen using only her mouth against Elphaba's.

“All I want is you,” Elphaba told her between kisses. “You're the only one for me, and always will be.” Her hands dug into the softness of Glinda's hips. “I promise, Glinda.”

“I don't care,” Glinda told her. “You must stop your terrorism, or you will have to leave this house, and never return until you've either won, or -” the only other option felt like dust in her mouth. Like the smoke that raised from Elphaba's skin upon the touch of water. Glinda didn't say it. “Or given up,” she said instead. “Oh, Elphie, just give up.”

“I can't,” Elphaba told her.

Glinda shoved her away. “Leave,” she told her. “I don't want to hear from you again.”

Elphaba didn't say goodbye.

Glinda found a little blood on her underclothes the next morning, and prepared for moon blood to follow. It seemed like it was late, but she couldn't quite remember. 

Her mother sent her to the house of the Keplers, which was a day by carriage from the Uplands’. She arrived that night, and the Keplers welcomed her, propriety painting the space between grief and blame.

There was no more blood, and Glinda shrugged it off. She was always grateful that she didn't have to endure the monthly cycle when she could avoid it, although her stomach felt swollen, so it might have been better if she had bled. Anyway, there wasn't anything to do about it.

Glinda stayed there for a few days, hoping to repair the damage that Elphaba had done to Glinda's reputation, as well as the Kepler family themselves.

In the drawing-room on the second day, the eldest prince told Glinda that his parents had only been visiting the Emerald City for a few days. It had been on the Wizard's invitation. “The problem,” the man explained, “wasn't that the horses ran wild, although they did. And it wasn't the carriage itself. It was just that they were on a hill, and the carriage rolled down it. I have seen their bodies, or what's left, but I won't let Andrea or Gilly see them.” He swallowed thickly and rubbed the fog on the outside of his glass with his thumb.  

“I am so sorry,” Glinda told him. “If there is anything at all that we can do for you during this difficult time…”

“There is,” he told her. “You can make sure that if the monster shows its face in the North, it'll be put in chains.”

“Already done,” Glinda told him. Not that she had any enforcers herself. The Wizard's police were under his orders, not hers. Glinda's policy would change nothing. Elphaba had done all the damage she could to her reputation without Glinda's help. Now was the time to bring Oz together, and if Glinda was not participating, she'd be left out. Heavens knew what that would mean for her.

She went from the Keplers’ to the Emerald City.

“Next time you send your men to my house, tell them to knock rather than breaking the door,” she told the Wizard directly.

“Glinda!” he exclaimed happily, taking her hand and actually spinning her around. “There is a ball tonight, and if you don't agree to be my date, I could barely stand to go at all. Won't you?”

“Only so long as you promise to court no other,” Glinda teased him.

And so everything was back to normal, for a time. The Wizard knew that to keep Elphaba's allies close to him meant that they were not by her. Somehow, Elphaba's notoriety and influence had only made Glinda more valuable to the Wizard.

Glinda found that when she returned to her estate, it was as host to a number of minor nobles and policymakers. Everything had settled, and when it did, Glinda was even more established as the ruler of the North.

James was married under the peach blossoms at the Uplands’ estate. His new wife, Dawn, was offered a job in the house, as James was a favored servant and the only manservant who was still able bodied. The dress Dawn wore when they married was white, and obscured what Glinda and all the peasants knew was the evidence of a deflowered girl, a maiden by name but not in deed.

Glinda's chest was tight as she watched the ceremony from afar during a carefully-timed walk with her mother around the grounds. She smoothed her own skirts with her hands, and her hand rested briefly on her stomach.

She had to tell Elphaba.

She had to tell Elphaba, before it reached - before it was too late to do anything about it.

She had to tell Elphaba that by some miracle of science, nature, or magic, their lovemaking had the same result as Dawn and James’, and that she, like Dawn, would soon be a mother.

She would tell Elphaba, and then they would decide what to do.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've retro-ed something in Chapter 3 - Nessarose is not yet ruler of Munchkinland.

Glinda sent a missive - long and ostentatious, but that was sort of the point - by way of the Emerald City post to a minor dignitary in Munchkinland. The past few months had not been easy in Elphaba’s homeland; the Munchkins, unlike the Animals, were concentrated in one place, which made them both easy to target, and enthusiastic when it came to a rebellion.

It nearly had. The Wizard’s influence reached barely to the borders of Munchkinland. The interior of the East was a Badland of gangs and martial law - or so the Wizard claimed.

And so Glinda wrote a long instructional letter to the governor of one of the barrier towns. All capitalized letters in the letter - every one, starting with “Ellustrious”, which even Glinda knew wasn’t a word, spelled the message: “ELPHABA MEET ME AT EC APARTMENT TELL ME DATE AND TIME.”

The postmaster’s assistant in the Emerald City read letters that transferred through that office, and had trained himself to quickly piece together the capitalized letters in this way, checking for hidden messages in the text. Glinda’s house guest, an Ox from the university in Quox, told her that this was the easiest way to get in touch with the opposition.

Glinda didn’t know it, but the postmaster’s assistant did transfer the message to a courier service that took his letters for free. The message was dropped off along the route that passed the desolate West, under a stone in an abandoned tower. There, it was joined by a few other scraps of paper, before they all were freed from the rock by the flying monkey Gerald.

Gerald brought the letters to the old castle that was Elphaba’s base of operations. Kiamo Ko, home to the now-extinct family that had turned this land from verdant productivity to the wasteland it now appeared to be. The actual provenance of the desolation was lost to history, but Elphaba liked the Monkeys’ version best: A magical accident turned the soil to salt. All that grew here now were tall salt-tolerant bushes, and crenellations of salt that spiked out of the ground in a silent testament to the unnatural event. It was as good a guess as any, and a nice fireside legend.

Glinda did not know how long a message might take to reach Elphaba, but hadn't imagined that it would take more than a week. When two weeks began to turn into three, she asked James to ready her carriage. On the way to Elphaba's castle, she would stop by the Emerald City.

She had delayed too long. She had been so dubious of the possibility, while months wasted. Every possible sign was evident, and she gave them no notice at all. First it was a cold, and then probably just some spoilt meat. Then it was the state of her mattress, which must be replaced. Then, in the Emerald City, it must be the smoke in the air. There was always an excuse for her perpetual affliction.

And that she didn't bleed - it must be the anxiety of her new station. She hadn't bled after she and Elphaba had started their love affair, not until the winter break. That had been more than one month.

When her favorite dress was tight around her stomach, she worried that she was too enamored by the new cook's cakes. In the years before Shiz, she'd cured her love of cakes by way of regurgitation, a habit that she considered revisiting now that the seams were fit to burst on the blue silk dress that Elphaba had loved so dearly.

Then it wasn't only her slimmest dress, and turning sideways in the mirror, it was mainly not her thighs or breasts that had absorbed the weight, and she'd missed four months’ worth of blood, and she was unable to resist the inevitable conclusion that she had not been as immune as she had thought herself, and that it wasn't only ejaculate that would prove her ruination.

She had wondered, during a spell of absolute dejection that lasted a week, whether it would have been different if Elphaba had a penis. Entirely aside from the possibility of attraction to her - and the fact that they would not have been roommates if it had been so - would Glinda have been more careful?

At least they would have known what it was to avoid, lest this problem be seeded and grow. As it was, Glinda had no idea, except that most likely it had come when Glinda was in Elphaba's tower. Was it when they had first loved each other, when Glinda had peaked too quickly and Elphaba had ridden her fingers, hovering above? Or during the fruitless but enthusiastic twining of bodies after that?

It must have been when Elphaba orgasmed, her four fingers digging deep into Glinda, and Glinda had watched her face until the sensation was too intense to resist. It had been when they peaked together, not that they hadn't done it before, but perhaps the timing was different or maybe - maybe Elphaba had done this knowingly. But then how could Elphaba have left her, knowing what she had done, and what it could mean for Glinda?

Was this one last attempt to make Glinda leave society and live with Elphaba in her desolate tower? Did Elphaba think that this would make Glinda irredeemable, as Elphaba herself was, and that once that had happened she would finally agree to join her and leave the world behind?

No. Elphaba did not know. She couldn't.

For a brief moment, Glinda considered dealing with the problem without Elphaba's knowledge at all. It would be simplest.

But she remembered how Elphaba had held the baby monkey, how she'd gently wrapped the blanket around its shivering body. She remembered her dream from what felt like long ago - a young woman, not yet weary to the world as Elphaba had been, but the same age as Elphaba when she and Glinda had met. The girl's features were distinct, and Glinda had given the dream no more thought but to think, _How beautiful a child of Elphaba's would be,_ and how terrible the thought that at the time she'd had that dream, a child of Elphaba's had been seeded in her belly. And that now she would consider terminating that child without mentioning a word of it to Elphaba, who was Glinda's most dearly beloved, even through whatever horrendous disagreement they were having now. Even if the fight might seem now that it had no possible resolution - still it seemed unfair to offer Elphaba no opportunity to comment on what was hers, too, and not just Glinda's.

Glinda's heart latched onto that idea, most of all. Elphaba had said that she hated what was not shared between them. If Elphaba loved Glinda even a little - which Glinda had no doubt of - wouldn't she love this, a child that was shared completely between them? What would Glinda not do to keep this chance, which might never come again, to see herself and her truest love as one?

Maybe this would be enough to spark Elphaba's redemption. Maybe it would, at least, get Elphaba's attention. Maybe Elphaba would care enough to pause, and consider that her actions affected more than just herself, and that there were people in this world who wanted her.

That was Elphaba's problem, Glinda had always thought. That she thought herself unwantable and unwanted, and so she fought back against the entire world with fists clenched tight. That was what Glinda wanted to cure. As much as Elphaba had been a fascination to her, Elphaba had also been someone who could appreciate every single subtle detail of Glinda's affection, because she had never experienced any at all before Glinda poured it upon her.

Nobody had loved Elphaba before this, and nobody would ever love Elphaba so dearly again. If there was anything Glinda could do to entice Elphaba back into the world, perhaps it would be to offer her a place in it. And what better way than a family?

So when it took two weeks to get Elphaba’s letter back, and every day felt like a step closer to her secret being discovered, Glinda adjusted all her dresses and prepared her carriage to go. She couldn’t transport herself there without any effort at all - unlike Elphaba, who routinely continued to drop in on important functions, spitting harsh words mainly, and then disappearing without anybody having the chance of considering moving against her.

It would take Glinda some effort, namely the effort of riding in a carriage through the encroaching autumn, with the leaves turning color and all the roads bitter but not yet frozen underfoot.

She would bring nobody, she decided. By the time she arrived it would be harvest-time, and first snowfall would come soon thereafter. In some tiny part of her heart, she calculated the weeks and wondered if she would just stay there, after all, because their baby would be born at midwinter and it would be too dangerous to take the carriage alone, back through the rocks and cold to the North, where Glinda did not want to be at all.

And if she stayed there through the winter, what would become of her determination to remain a part of this world? If she saw Elphaba holding the daughter that, in that desolate castle so far from reality, would be a princess, what on earth would make Glinda wish to return to the place that would make her daughter a low-born bastard and a fatherless disgrace?

What did Glinda plan to do at all, when the best of all worlds seemed to be Glinda giving up entirely, and allowing Elphaba’s plan to rule their lives? It seemed unreal that she could even imagine staying there with Elphaba at all. And yet…

On the night before she set out, she found a scrap of paper under her windowsill. She couldn’t tell how long it had been there, although she knew that she had been waiting for it. It read:

_At your apartments in one week, August the 29th, midnight. If this is a betrayal, know well that there will be consequences._

It wasn’t a week. It was three days, barely enough time to get there by train, if she left in the morning. Glinda changed into her clothes for the morning and lay sleepless in bed until dawn broke and she dragged James, bleary-eyed, from his chambers to chaperone her to the train station. The first train should leave at 10am, so she should be there within plenty of time.

James did not complain, although he was ruffled. She shrugged off the concern that Dawn needed his attentions in the morning. Perhaps his amorous attentions, but doubtless no more than that - as Glinda herself had observed, the sickness that came in morning was long past its height. Dawn could spare James this one morning.

James loaded her bags into the coach when it arrived, and waved at Glinda’s window as she departed. It was only when the station was a speck on the horizon that Glinda remembered that she’d brought nothing to read, having packed for a journey by carriage and alone. She contented herself to read the news, and plan for the next parties she’d host.  

The Animals she’d invited were due to arrive at the Uplands in one months’ time, which was barely any time at all, as far as Glinda could tell. She retained the services of the Quox professor, and a few would likely trickle in ahead of the rest. She’d need to hire more help, just for the week of the convention, at least. She sketched out the seating arrangements from memory of the guests who had written ahead. She assumed that half of the rest would be coming.

And how many, like the Quox professor, would never leave? That may be her true problem. But the Uplands’ coffers were as flush as they had ever been. Glinda hadn’t resisted raising the taxes on the middle class; otherwise, she would have barely enough to pay the Wizard for his police and for the patrols that kept the borders of Oz safe from foreign invasion.

She chuckled to think what Elphaba would say of that concession. “Secede!” she’d say. She’d already made the point abundantly clear, during a brief speech at the Ozian Leaders of Oz, the first real council that the Wizard had ever assembled. “Do not pay his taxes and do not abide his policing! You have the right to rule yourselves.”

Obviously they did, but what Elphaba really wanted was for one of the principalities to resist, along with her. And she had Munchkinland. Surely that was enough to placate her, for now.

Glinda hired the services of a butler upon arrival, two days later, in the Emerald City. She called the service that she always called, upon arrival at her apartments, and they sent two maidservants to prepare lunch and dinner before Elphaba’s appointment.

The apartment was at the top floor of one of the tallest towers in the city. The grandest city in the world, Glinda thought it, and truly it was a luxury to afford an apartment such as this one. She could look on two sides down the long boulevards, and she could see the gardens that led to the Wizard’s estates from the eastern side. On the northern side, she could see the city dissipate into shorter and smaller towers, until it was farms. And directly below, the Yellow Brick Road met in a massive square, with the gaping maw of the Wizard’s antechamber seeming to loom over the intersection like a grim specter.

The Road dwindled to the west, barely reaching beyond the city’s borders. To the east, it stretched farther, yet still Glinda could see the workers that toiled, slowly, to extend it. To the north, numerous carriages and wagons took the road, so numerous that the road already required repair, even in its infancy. And to the south, a smaller number, but still extravagant in this very center of the world, the city where every road ended.

The Emerald City.


	8. Chapter 8

The first sign of Elphaba was a cackle behind Glinda. It was a familiar sound, but different, too. Elphaba's laugh had always been ironic, but the time of day and unexpectedness of it made it nearly sinister.

Elphaba emerged from the depths of the apartment like a wraith. “Never would I have imagined that Miss Glinda Upland would pass the Banns into law in the North,” she said as she descended upon Glinda. 

Glinda jumped and backed away, toward the floor-to-ceiling pane of glass that was the wall of the apartment. The lights from the city shone brightly through the window into the otherwise dim apartment.

“You're insane.” The first words out of her mouth were regrettable. “I have done no such thing.”

“You've allowed the separation of train cars, and the unfair taxes. Next it will be a prohibition against work.” Elphaba stopped behind the couch, and Glinda's back hit the glass behind her. 

“They come from the Emerald City in separate cars and besides, the train is operated privately.”

“I am disgusted by your ‘progress,’” Elphaba told her, and Glinda's stomach turned over in a roil of panicked emotion. “Won't you take the example of the Tigelaar territories, and do some actual good?”

“I - yes, I am, I -” Glinda stood straighter and tried to adjust her dress to regain her composure. The beastly thing did not fit her properly, even though she'd thought it did when she was dressing for this meeting.

“All I have observed are parties and more parties. All you can seem to do is drink and be merry, can you, Miss Upland?”

Elphaba had been watching her? Glinda felt panic fill her chest again. Surely she hadn't watched her closely enough to notice. Or would that have been a good thing, if she had? 

“Well, you missed something during your observations,” she began, voice shaking.

And then she hesitated. She'd imagined their reunion to be tearful, or at least tender. She'd hoped that Elphaba missed her, but it seemed that during their time apart Elphaba had just resented her, and become more bitter.

It made what Glinda had resolved to tell her that much harder. She wished to reach out and hold any part of Elphaba, but Elphaba was looking at her with one eyebrow raised and she couldn't just walk the five steps it would take to get to her. Could she?

“Well, what is it?” Elphaba asked. Her tone was a little different now. If Glinda wanted to imagine it, her voice was softer.

“Didn't you miss me, Elphie?” Glinda asked her. She took a step forward. “What have you been doing, out there in that tower? Have you been… all right?”

Elphaba scoffed, but she rounded the couch, which made walking to her feel somehow easier. “I have been focused. There is so much to do.”

“I have the Animal convention coming up. I'd ask you to come, but I'm afraid given the state of things that the Wizard might burn my house down to try and kill you.” Glinda laughed a little, and a ghost of a smile lit Elphaba's face. In a rush, Glinda continued, “And there's so much more I plan to do, too, Elphaba. I want so badly for you to come back and try one more time to be - to be our houseguest. We will protect you there, and work on those policies you won't stop talking about. I just need you to work with me on your - on your  _ methods.” _

Elphaba sighed. Somehow the distance had finally been bridged, and Elphaba touched Glinda's cheek with the back of her hand. “My lovely Glinda,” she said softly. “These past months have not cured you of your unnatural  affection for me? You still hold onto a hope for us?”

Glinda shook her head and caught Elphaba's hand in hers, holding it up against her face. “Of course, Elphie.” She took a deep breath. “Have you given us up?”

“You know that I promised I wouldn't,” Elphaba said, almost teasingly. “So is this to be a one-night stand?”

Glinda wished that it was only that. “I have something to tell you that I hope will make you reconsider your answer to my invitation.” Her palm was clammy, and she released Elphaba instinctively, knowing that the sweat would burn Elphaba. Then her hand had nowhere to go, and it hovered between them, before Glinda let it fall to her side.

Elphaba smiled slightly at her. Her hand stayed securely against Glinda's cheek. “You’re trembling. Do not be afraid, my sweet. What do you plan to tell me?”

“I am with child,” Glinda said. It was only the slightest whisper, a wind between her lips, but it seemed to gust Elphaba over. 

A monsterous scowl overtook Elphaba's face, turning her features haggard and sour. She turned and walked away, and Glinda waited for some response, heart thrumming. She thought of a million things to follow, but none seemed quite right, except that Elphaba was silent and still for too long, facing with her back to Glinda, and Glinda couldn't abide the silence any longer and said, “I had considered ending it without telling you, but I thought it unfair. You should tell me what you want to do?” Her statement ended like a question, in an undignified squeak that made their situation seem less serious than it was.

“I suppose,” Elphaba said after a long silence, voice cracking. “I suppose that I am grateful that you told me, if the father has -” her throat caught, and Glinda went to her, catching her poor limp hand in her own and kissing the back of her neck.

“What father? Silly me, I did not even think to mention - there is no father, only you.”

“You jest with me,” Elphaba said, holding tight to Glinda's hand and turning in her arms. Glinda's smile faded when she saw the look, still stormy and dour, on Elphaba's face. “When I had only responded to your summons because of the friendship we used to share, and you'd make of it some kind of joke - unless you wish to pin the blame - this does not make sense,” she concluded. “This is nonsense. If you have not bedded another, you are mistaken.”

Glinda was giddy with the possibility that she had finally gotten Elphaba's attention. If Elphaba cared enough to be this upset, perhaps she did care. 

“I am not,” she told Elphaba. “It was a trick of magic, I think, but I haven't even thought of the possibility of being so close to any other, and haven't ever wanted to regardless. I can't imagine that anything could be so sweet as your touch,” and even as she said it, Elphaba's hands tightened around her arm and her waist, and Glinda's breath caught.  

Their bodies were against each other, Elphaba's gaunt lankiness and Glinda's creamy, bountiful curves, and Glinda was so afraid that she stayed completely motionless as Elphaba investigated the change that had overtaken Glinda's body. “It - it can't be true,” Elphaba said. She was still scowling mightily, and Glinda giggled.

“You're tickling -”

“Perhaps something happened to you that you do not remember,” Elphaba said.

Glinda pushed her shoulder as hard as she could, which had barely any discernible effect. “How dare you keep trying to deny the truth of what I am telling you?” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Do you not think my bedchambers safe, in my own home?”

“I'm sorry,” Elphaba said raggedly. 

“You just wish that it wasn't true.” Glinda’s hand left Elphaba's shoulder and landed on her neck, yanking, and she kissed her bruisingly. “I am sure that you do not love me, now.”

“Love! You continue to think that this comes down to love, when we both know that this must be a curse.” Elphaba was speaking quickly, as if she had to get her thoughts out before it was too late. “Like my skin, and the - the water, Glinda, I suppose there is only peril for me in the act of love. And if your baby is mine and it is born, it will be a monster, like me.” Elphaba exhaled harshly and finished with, “You know, Glinda.”

Glinda waited for whatever she was going to say, but it seemed that she was done. And then she said, “Elphaba, you know that I think that every single thing about you is utterly perfect. But if you are worried about her being green, I had a vision of her and she is not.”

Elphaba’s shoulders relaxed, only a small bit. 

Glinda said, “Do you really think that I would have had relations without marrying, if it was not you?”

Elphaba scoffed wetly. “What we do is not 'relations.’”

“Maybe our magic has made that otherwise.” Glinda tried to radiate sincerity. “Have you thought that the touch of a man would feel differently?” At that, Elphaba twitched and looked away, and Glinda frowned at her. “Is that a yes?” Elphaba did not respond. “Well, I never have. I never thought that I was missing anything. I thought I was the luckiest human on Earth.”

“You don't think I am just a distraction? I have heard that it is common, among - your type…”

Glinda grabbed the back of her head and kissed her on her forehead, with as much heartbreak and warmness as was in her heart, and with lips closed. “Elphaba,” she said, and tears were encroaching again, “Honestly, why would I want to ruin everything in my life for you, if this was a distraction for me? To tell the truth, I am ruined by you. I want nothing more than just to have you, Elphaba.”

“That is not true, because you have carried on with your affairs in these months apart.”

“The Wizard's police knocked down our door, twice. Do you know that my mother would still have protected you, had you not left? And they destroyed priceless antiques, and still my mother inquired as to your health. As the windows were open, air drafted through the entire house, and - I fainted, with nobody there to catch me -” She’d fallen on a couch, but that wasn't the point; neither did it matter that she had fallen because Fiyero had finally left, before the Wizard's second strike. 

Glinda frowned at Elphaba. “I don't imagine that you had gleaned that much from your creepy looking-stone, Elphaba, but that is what you left behind while you led those pack animals to their safe haven.” 

“I didn't know,” Elphaba said. 

“You should have thought about me. And now maybe you will.”

“You'll  _ use _ this,” Elphaba said as if it was a revelation. She stepped away from Glinda.

“The state of things is intolerable,” Glinda told her furiously. She let Elphaba back away. “You are beyond reason, and any sense. Would you just see that what you do hurts other people? You haven't apologized for the act of terrorism in the Emerald City, you know. And I can't forgive you for that.”

“What would you do, if I tell you that I am beyond redemption?” Elphaba asked her, and Glinda paused. 

“I had never thought that it could be true,” she said, with hesitation because she hadn't. “I am trying to offer you your chance, Elphaba.”

“And what will you tell the world, in two months when nobody could possibly mistake your condition? In five, when you have a suckling babe and no father to point to?” 

Glinda took a step backward herself, away from the hateful truth. “It won't matter to me, if only you would live with me and  _ behave.”  _

“I have a mission in a week’s time, which I cannot under any possible twist of fate avoid. You should have waited two weeks longer.”

Glinda heard her voice drop in loathing, the emotion of which felt still distant amidst the ringing in her ears. “In two weeks you could be  _ dead, _ and why should I keep a babe that has no father?”

“Why should you keep this child at all?” Elphaba asked plainly, and she was too far away for Glinda to strike. 

Instead Glinda reached behind herself and grasped her own wand. “I am glad to know your position on the matter,” she said. The weight of the confrontation was heavy on her chest. “Let me assure you that I will not hold onto such foolishness any longer.” And indeed, it was true that she had a purple potion in her drawer, just waiting for her decision. Surely the world would not take her to task for this. 

“That is not -” Elphaba had begun.

But Glinda was already gone.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N The first segment is supposed to end the previous chapter.

 

Glinda's dreams that night were feverish and vivid. She dreamt of nursing a beautiful, healthy blond baby boy, who slapped his tiny hand against his own cheek and looked at her knowingly. Then the baby was gone, and it was Elphaba at her breast, driving her fingers into Glinda, until the pleasure turned into intolerable pain, and Elphaba pulled from between Glinda's legs an infant whose skin matched Elphaba's. Elphaba was disgusted, and dropped the baby on Glinda's chest, leaving them. 

She never reappeared in the dream, but the blond baby did. The two babies were tiny and so much the same, and so different, clutched against Glinda's chest. The green baby cried more, and his eyes were black, and Glinda loved him as dearly as his blond and cheerful brother.

They moved seamlessly from the bed to a forest, dark and gloomy. The eyes of night-creatures watched them as Glinda held her two sons against her chest and ran, stumbling on roots and dodging trees that seemed to reach for them. 

Finally she found a bole that was hollow and large enough for shelter, and she skidded to a halt there. Rain poured down from the sky, but here they were safe. 

She lay the two babies down, but neither of them moved, or opened their eyes, and she could see that they were dead.

  
  
  


“What I meant, it isn't what I meant,” Elphaba said to the open air of Glinda's apartment. She cursed and clenched her fists hard enough to break skin, and then she began pacing, stubbornness and bone-deep regret warring already in her chest, wordless for now.

Her first impulse was to follow Glinda, although it was unspeakably dangerous. First she had to find her. She needed some type of tool. Surely Glinda had a looking-glass here. She spun and jogged through the rooms, quickly finding the one Glinda was staying in.

It was a mess, piles of dresses strewn about like a puffy rainbow on every available surface. A fleeting smile followed the warmth of recognition - this was Glinda before a large event, as Elphaba knew well - but the affection opened Elphaba's heart to other feelings, and she choked everything down and leaned on her fists at the mirror, gazing at it and whispering the incantation like a prayer, over and over.

It was working, but Glinda did not appear in the mirror. She was blocking Elphaba's scrying. Elphaba cursed again and tried over and over, until it was clear that it would not work.

“Glinda,” Elphaba cursed. “Show me yourself. I have to tell you - damn you, this conversation is not over. You don't decide when we stop talking. You don't decide what I think.” She sighed and tried the incantation one more time. It didn't work.

“You don't decide what path our lives will take,” Elphaba told her own reflection. But damn it, if what Glinda had told her was true, Elphaba was as much a victim of it as Glinda was. Why did Glinda think that this was enough to turn Elphaba's mission into a life of domesticity? To turn her life into the one Glinda had chosen for her, and not what Elphaba herself wanted? Because of something that neither of them knew would be a mistake?

And either way, Glinda was wrong to think that she might want the baby. Whatever pattern of thought had gripped her, it was not Glinda that wanted to be a mother. It must be the effects of the condition, and no form of logic could prevail on it.

She could have a baby, and have Elphaba too, but she could not keep her kingdom as well, and that was the conflict that Elphaba found herself in the midst of. And what did Elphaba's wishes matter at all, when this was a problem entirely Glinda's? To birthe a child while being the unmarried queen of the North… It could be the small bit of leverage the Wizard needed to remove the sleeping bomb in his newly-formed Council’s midst. He knew Glinda was dangerous, and Elphaba had no doubt that she was second on his list, after Fiyero. At worst, this immaculate conception could mean an upheaval that left Glinda at the bottom of the precarious pile she'd somehow clawed her way to the top of. 

So maybe Glinda's misunderstanding, the one that had made her leave this apartment with a stomp of her tiny booted foot, maybe it was for the best. 

And it was unspeakably unfair of Glinda to offer this like a choice to Elphaba, when this had absolutely nothing to do with Elphaba, and everything to do with what had been keeping them apart this year and a half, and would likely keep them apart for longer still - maybe forever, if things remained as they were. It was Glinda's infatuation with sociality that continued to drive them apart, and entirely Glinda's fault, because Elphaba knew that Glinda was not politically opposed to Elphaba. It was just that as much as Glinda told Elphaba she loved her, she loved society more, and that much was impossible to deny.

Maybe the baby could be enough to finally sway Glinda, though. She clearly wanted to keep it. She wanted Elphaba, too. She said she'd like Elphaba to stay with her, and seemed to imply that if she didn't agree, that she wouldn't plan to keep their baby, either.

The entire situation was too easy to dissect into its pieces, but that one stray thought -  _ their _ baby - wrenched Elphaba’s heart away from logic and into incoherency.

She whispered the incantation at the mirror again. At any time, Glinda might drop the protection she'd raised against Elphaba's scrying. When she did, Elphaba felt no guilt at interrupting her privacy, because it must be when Glinda wanted to be seen.

But the spell continued to fail, and Elphaba pushed up to standing, squeezing her eyes shut and pacing to the door, and then back. Where could she be? Should Elphaba just go blindly to her room at her estate? A second jump through space would be so dangerous. It was hard enough to transport herself between places twice within a few minutes’ time, but three times would be even harder, or impossible. She might be trapped by the Wizard anywhere she went, as the Wizard had attempted so many times.

Where else would Glinda seek shelter, after what Elphaba had said? “Why should you keep this child at all?” Elphaba repeated to herself, and slammed her open palm on the door frame.

It hurt, but not enough. She did it again, and then a third time. “I didn't mean that.” She found that she was gasping, and proactively fumbled for a handkerchief, hoping that tears wouldn't come, but unable to tell whether they would. 

“Glinda, please come back now,” she pled. She realized that was why she was still here, and hadn't gone back to Kiamo Ko. She was waiting for Glinda to come back.

All her dresses were here. Eventually, someone would come. Right? 

In the meantime, Elphaba was helpless to change her brash words. She had been so cold, too logical, during their discussion. She hadn't felt with her heart, something that took practice to begin with, which she hadn't had much of since Shiz. 

She found paper, and a very nice fountain pen, and sat at the desk. She looked at her own reflection in the mirror, and wondered as always what Glinda had ever seen in her. A person who was worthy of such affection as Glinda had, would have to be gentle and kind to her. Would have to be good, to the core, and Elphaba was not. Elphaba was too smart to be that good. This was all a terrible mistake.

Glinda wouldn't terminate tonight. Elphaba had until tomorrow to find her and either give her this letter, or talk to her, or both. She could still salvage this.

 

_ Glinda - _

_ I did not mean what you thought _

 

Elphaba ripped the top of the paper off and started again. At the end of an endless number of crosshatched misstatements, this is the letter that emerged:

 

_ Glinda - _

_ I should have said some things today and I will try to say them now. _

_ Firstly, I am ever in awe of you. What happens when we are together feels like a strange miracle of magic, every time, so I should not have been so surprised of what you've told me did happen, because that is a miracle, too, and it is good.  _

_ Second, I wish that you could see that everything would be righted, if you would listen to what your heart tells you to do. If it is the same as what my heart says, I am certain that all will be reconciled. Under no grounds would I ever reject you, Glinda. It is the world that is our enemy, and not each other. If there is anyone you could ever be sure of, it is me, because my greatest hope is only your happiness.  _

_ Third, you must know that while I do not intend to toss away my purpose, which is to free the Animals from the Wizard's oppression, truly there is no conflict between your condition and my goal. If your mother is as friendly as you have said, we can work to compromise. Or I can remain a secret. I want to make this work with you. And I would like to see your child. It is not a matter that must necessarily require what you seem to think is required, and if there is anything I can do to prove that to you, please only say the word and I will do it.  _

 

Elphaba read the letter a few times, and then she ripped it into pieces and started again.

 

_ Glinda - _

_ I am sorry for my hasty words, and I meant nothing that I said tonight. I will do what you ask of me. Please give me that chance. _

 

She tried the incantation at the mirror one more time, and then she stepped through space to Glinda's room at her mother's estate. 

It was empty and dark, the closets in utter disarray. 

Elphaba folded the letter twice and left it on Glinda's desk. Then she opened the window, mounted her broom, and flew back that night to the Emerald City.

Glinda must have stayed there. She had countless friends in the city. Elphaba would try to find her there. 

When dawn broke, it first lit upon the tallest spires of the city, still a distance away. The city glistened, absorbing the light and refracting it down from the spires into the rest of the buildings, filling the city with what Elphaba imagined was an unholy light. 

Elphaba ducked her head and listed out her targets. First, she would visit Fiyero. She blinked her eyes against the glare and the wind and tucked in her elbows. 

Fiyero’s flat was on the west end of city, far from Glinda's. Elphaba knew that he was there, as he had sent her recent correspondence on the developments in the Tigelaar territories. The increasing frequency in raids by the Wizard's police. He thought that during the next Council meeting, which was scheduled in two days’ time, the Wizard would completely depose the Tigelaar family from their territories, or else the police would mount a plainclothes raid that had the same effect. He thought it was too late for his dynasty to retain power.

That was why Elphaba had to complete her mission. At the official appointment of the Wizard's press secrerary, she planned to enact the first intentional murder of her brief reign as the Wicked Witch. If the Wizard was immune to assassination, which somehow it seemed he was, that did not mean that assassination was completely off the table. 

She landed on Fiyero's balcony and peered through the darkly tinted windows into the flat. 

Fiyero was sitting at the table by the window, his head in his hands, breakfast untouched before him. A second plate was set, but nobody was sitting across from him.

Elphaba opened the door to the flat, and he jumped a half foot and stumbled to his feet. “Elphaba!” he greeted her in surprise, loudly. “What are you doing here?”

“Thought I'd drop in for a quick call,” she told him, closing the door behind herself. “As I was in the neighborhood.”

“What a day for surprise visits,” he said, frowning. Then he recovered his manners. “I had been expecting a breakfast companion, but she has not made it, and the food grows cold. Would you join me?”

She rolled her eyes at him, but took the seat across. He sat, too, regarding her with guarded eyes.

So Elphaba's suspicion must have been correct, and Glinda was here. What an easy guess it had been, and how easy it was to read Fiyero's face, but had she told Fiyero everything? Or anything at all?

“I'm sorry to see that you've been stood up,” Elphaba told him. 

“I guess so,” Fiyero said. “Champagne? I find it helps ease journey from morning till noontime.”

“And whiskey helps the rest,” Elphaba teased lightly.

“Well-said,” he said, leaping to his feet and moving to the counter, where a bottle was indeed open and waiting.

She accepted a flute from him, but set it on the table rather than taking a sip, watching as he refilled his own glass and brought the bottle to the table. He sat awkwardly, fiddling with the base of his glass, balancing it in his palm and then spinning it slowly using the fingers of that one hand.

They sat in silence, Elphaba content to wait for Fiyero's next thought to occur to him. Fiyero grew increasingly agitated by the silence, which mildly amused Elphaba.

She considered getting up and trying doors around the flat. Fiyero wouldn't stop her. But maybe it would be better to use him as a messenger. At the least, she could write another note to Glinda and leave it here for her. She didn't want to totally invade Glinda's privacy. And if Glinda knew she was here - which Fiyero's shout guaranteed - and she had not emerged yet to confront her, probably prying wouldn't be welcome.

“You're not opposed to premature termination, I'm guessing,” Fiyero finally said.

“Her body, her choice,” Elphaba said lightly, and then she sobered. “It is not what I would prefer.”

“What solution would you propose? And I wasn't even certain you two were -” Fiyero gagged, and then cleared his throat, “- fooling around.”

“You always must have wondered how you never made it with either of us.” Elphaba smirked. 

“I didn't know you had those parts,” Fiyero said.

Elphaba cackled at that. “I don't. She didn't tell you? She says it was a mistake of magic.”

Fiyero was flustered and red around the ears. “I guess it was the smallest part of our discussion.”

“Most of what she said was disparaging of my character, I suppose.”

“If it was, it would be right,” Fiyero told her indignantly.

“Fun!” Elphaba remarked. “So you'd like to scold me. I never said that I would not welcome or provide for such a provenance, but somehow the conversation never turned to that as an option.”

“I suppose you'd say that you were a poor choice for her indiscretion, being unable to do so.”

“You think I can't offer what she requires,” Elphaba said. Her mood was darkening, and she could feel the sides of her mouth turning down. 

“I am thinking that you refuse to, Thropp Second Descending,” Fiyero said.

“What she's asked of me is not required for this,” Elphaba snapped. She found that she was standing. “Either way, I would welcome it, if it was my choice.”

“It is, Elphaba!” Fiyero was standing, too.

“I am doing this for all of us!” Elphaba scowled at him. “When we have won, we can think about compromise.”

“Maybe it's time for compromise,” Fiyero said, and then gestured to her broom. “Won't you get out of here, Elphaba, before you're seen?”

Elphaba paused, and then she said quietly, “Give her a message from me, Fiyero. As one who was once my friend.” She took a paper and pen from him and wrote the same, final message to Glinda as she had left at Glinda's estate, and handed it to him.

Their fingers touched as he handed him the note, and she flinched at the touch. He was so short, scrawny, and far too certain of his own good looks.

She hated him, as she closed the door to his flat and breathed in, wondering if she could muster the magic to step through space to Kiamo Ko, in her exhaustion and distress.

She thought that probably she could. Easier than flying from this balcony another ten hours to her home.

She closed her eyes, breathed, and then disappeared.


	10. Chapter 10

Elphaba peered keenly at the foggy image in her looking-stone.

“On the subject of the Tigelaar territories, I am… glad that we have a representative of the house today at this meeting,” the Wizard said. He was grandstanding, as usual, pacing before the long table. On one side, the rulers by birth were arrayed. The other side was apparently space for the Wizard to pace, and no-one else.

This was it. This was the moment that the Wizard condemned Fiyero's efforts and formalized the practices that had effectively pushed Fiyero out of the forefront of policymaking in his own family's territories. It was just one day after her ill-fated meeting with the prince, and in the meantime Elphaba had struggled to find a pathway for Fiyero out of his predicament, and failed utterly.

“It would be difficult to find a better example of an uncooperative house, and in times of such peril as these, it is the policy of the Emerald City to condemn lack of cooperation.” The Wizard took a deep breath, preparing for what was to come. As if it would be a surprise to anyone in attendance.

But then Glinda stood, interrupting him. “The northern territories henceforth put forward an announcement that may be relevant to this declaration.” Even in the fog of the globe, Glinda looked shaken and insecure.

There was a general mumbling, and Glinda continued before the Wizard found his bearings. “The noble houses of Upland and Tigelaar hereby announce an intended merge.” Glinda paused, and it was not clear whether the pause was an opportunity to catch her breath, or for dramatic effect. “By marriage.”

Elphaba sat back, and the image faded a little as her attention strayed. She made an effort to direct herself toward the image, wary of losing it.

Maybe it was Glinda's power that obstructed her access, because the image did not strengthen, regardless of the attention that Elphaba exerted. Did Glinda mean that her _mother_ would marry… Elphaba wracked her brain to find a suitable match, and found only Fiyero.

Would Lady Upland marry Fiyero, then?

Even through the weakening connection, Elphaba could hear a hubbub as the nobles stood and conferred, always with one eye on the Wizard to gauge his reaction. Glinda stayed standing, facing the Wizard with tremulous bravery.

Behind her, Fiyero loomed. Just before the connection faded completely, Elphaba saw him reach out a white, weak hand. His fingers interlaced with Glinda's.

She slammed her open palms on the table, and the looking-stone jumped off its stand and rolled along the table.

It cracked on the floor, and still Elphaba sat, frozen in shock and growing horror.

 

It was three days later that a message came from Glinda at last. The date of Morrible's instatement had been forestalled at the last moment, perhaps to give the Wizard a chance to figure out what to do with the Tigelaars and Uplands.

 _Come here, now,_ Glinda said to Elphaba, and it jolted her from a stupor that was mostly due to lassitude and not exhaustion.

It must be near midnight, Elphaba estimated, with one eye open to assess the state of the sky and the moon through the open window of her tower. Glinda had summoned her only one time since their time at Shiz, and to ill effect indeed. Elphaba had thought that Glinda called her last time because she had an itch she couldn’t scratch, but instead it had been a day and a half spent in a different world - the world that could have been, if only the Wizard had not turned out a villian. Elphaba had no doubt that she would have stayed with Glinda, if things had been different. As it was, it had only forestalled their inevitable parting, and probably made it harder for Glinda to bear.

Fiyero had installed himself as a fixture at Glinda's house, Elphaba remembered. His room had looked lived-in, like a second home. Elphaba struggled to reconcile the reality of her visit, how it had seemed that Glinda would keep her there at her mother’s estate forever, with the fact that Glinda must have shared her bed with Fiyero before she summoned Elphaba the first time.

Elphaba considered the shape of the full moon before her, and wondered if she should ignore Glinda. Maybe Glinda did not know that she called Elphaba, except that Glinda always called her when she was needed, in some weird co-dependence that, in the past few years, had always ended with Elphaba in the lurch.

And if Elphaba had never promised that she would, why should she follow Glinda's summons? If, in every other motion of herself, Glinda rejected Elphaba, why should Elphaba follow along?

Fiyero. Of all manly beasts, it had to be him, what was Elphaba's only friend. Glinda would only have agreed to marry him if Elphaba's suspicion was true, and Glinda had taken him to bed.

 _To bed._ It was an easy enough term, to mean what it did, but Elphaba should stop skirting the subject, even just in her own mind. Holy shit, to mean that Glinda had had his dick inside her -

Elphaba spat her disgust into her crooked elbow, and Glinda said, _Elphaba, where are you? Come to me._

And Elphaba, regardless of the consequence, came.

She appeared in a swirl of red smoke in front of Glinda. Glinda was curled into herself on her bed at her mother's, the picture of abject misery.

Elphaba immediately wished to comfort her. Instead, she stood tall and regarded Glinda impassively.

“You came,” Glinda whispered, and even just that smallest crumble of emotion made Elphaba cave completely. She took one step toward Glinda where she lay at the edge of the mattress.

The window was partially open, and through it Elphaba could see the shape of a woman in white, fluttering in the lamplight. The woman's stomach bulged from her dress unmistakably. While Elphaba watched, a redheaded man met her under the lamplight, spinning her, and the woman fell against his chest in hysterics. Happy.

Elphaba cast her gaze back to Glinda's, and imagined spinning Glinda as that man spun his wife. She imagined Glinda smiling like that woman did, and straightened her spine. “What do you want? Good Witch?” She couldn’t help but sneer.

“Elphie,” Glinda pled. She stood in her thin nightdress, and Elphaba hated what she could clearly see, when she knew to look.

She directed her gaze away from her stomach and to Glinda’s face. “What have you done, Glinda?”

“I didn't know,” Glinda told her miserably.

“Know _what?”_ Elphaba knew her tone was verging upon offensive, and did not care in the slightest.

“You'd let me -”

“I'd never let you,” Elphaba interrupted. She recognized fury in her tone. “Let you? How could you betray our - our _arrangement_ \- like this?”

“We have an arrangement?” Glinda looked confused.

“I thought perhaps we did, but no longer. I'll be available to sustain your desires, and no questions will be asked.” Elphaba realized that she was describing the exact scenario that she had flinched from, when they had last met. But she didn't care, because there was no other option now. “Is that what you want, Glinda? That’s what you’ve always wanted.”

“No,” Glinda stuttered, and she stepped to Elphaba, reaching up to grasp the collar of Elphaba’s robe. “Please stop your shouting. Just listen,” she whispered, and Elphaba leaned down and kissed her pretty pouting lips.

Kissing Glinda was like nothing else. Elphaba had never thought that she wished to be another person's sustenance until she kissed Glinda and found out what being needed felt like. She had never liked touching, until there was Glinda with those lips, and her breathy moans, and her soft desire which was like nothing Elphaba had ever known. Glinda was so far outside of the realm of the possible that when she kissed her, Elphaba could almost convince herself that she transformed from the green monster into whatever Glinda saw when she looked at her. Because the green monster could not possibly kiss Glinda, Elphaba became someone who could.

Elphaba’s chest filled with the peculiar feeling of Glinda. Glinda pressed herself against Elphaba, tugging on her collar, and Elphaba kissed her until she was breathless and trembling.

When Elphaba pulled away, the buoyancy in her chest deflated abruptly. Glinda would marry Fiyero. Whatever their arrangement had been, if at any point it had felt like even a part of Glinda was Elphaba’s - now even that was gone.

Elphaba withdrew from the embrace slightly, and Glinda let her go. They looked at each other, standing in each other’s space, but not quite touching.

Glinda's breath huffed out cutely. Glinda’s huff had always drawn Elphaba's undivided and devoted attention, and Elphaba felt herself drawn in by it as always. Glinda must have seen that she was spellbound, because she said, “You forced me into it. I can see that you’re angry, but I will take the offer you made in your letter if it still stands.” Elphaba jerked in surprise, eyes narrowing. “I do not want to marry Fiyero,” Glinda said, and Elphaba turned from her, trying to clear the fog of enchantment that Glinda always cast over her eyes.

“You’d break off the engagement?” Elphaba asked, back turned.

“Yes, of course.”

“You won’t marry the father to your child, if I would stop harassing the Wizard? That seems -”

“I have never so much as kissed Fiyero,” Glinda said indignantly. “Elphie, you must stop calling me a liar.”

“He’s agreed to marry you without having even kissed you?” Elphaba spun in time to catch a flicker of guilt in Glinda’s eyes. “He _did_ kiss you,” Elphaba didn't stop to breathe, or think. “I will not abandon my mission, not while you have already found such a tidy solution to your problem, and Fiyero’s.” She gestured meanly toward Glinda’s belly. “I do not know why you insist upon being the largest impediment to me, when you already have a life that you would clearly never give up for _me.”_

“That’s not fair,” Glinda said breathlessly. “Please, Elphie.”

“You’d like it if I would go along with you in your life. You said before that I consider you an accessory to me - but the same could be said of you. This will never work.”

Elphaba swallowed and watched as Glinda’s face slowly turned red. “I had never thought I could loathe anything as much as I loathe you,” Glinda told her, eyes pinning Elphaba in place. “If you’ve withdrawn the offer in your letter, then you have truly abandoned me, when I have never needed you so desperately.” When Elphaba didn’t say anything back, Glinda said, “At least, then give me what you said you would,” and she stepped forward and drew Elphaba down for another long, lingering kiss.

Elphaba did not resist her. She ran her hands experimentally up Glinda’s back, and Glinda shivered and pressed closer, her kiss deepening. Elphaba gripped her side more firmly, and then found her breast. She could feel Glinda’s nipple distinctly through the thin material of the nightdress, although she barely brushed it before Glinda shuddered and arched into her hand.

She always wanted more time to savor Glinda's body, and Glinda rarely gave her any time at all. This time, Glinda ripped her own dress off, and then made short work of Elphaba’s robes by simply pulling them roughshod over Elphaba’s head. Then she pushed Elphaba onto the bed, climbing up her body and gasping in harsh desperation.

When she settled on Elphaba's hips, the wetness stung Elphaba a little on her the very sensitive and unscarred skin of her belly. Elphaba had forgotten that sometimes it stung, and she hissed in surprised pain. Glinda didn't seem to notice, grinding hard on her and clawing with as much wantonness as Elphaba could ever wish for, except that this was the least desirable situation that Elphaba had ever imagined herself in.

With Glinda in this position, it was possible to imagine her body as full with - cookies and all good things, anything but what it was - a small indiscretion that had unluckily become a betrothal of convenience - an accidental pairing fueled by wine or wantonness, that had turned into - what was to Elphaba always -

Glinda grabbed Elphaba's hand, which had held Glinda's hip loosely, and put it into the juncture of her legs. Elphaba, without any intention at all, surged into the wide and welcoming wetness that was presented to her. Because what else was there for, but to surge into Glinda? The wildness of her motion made Glinda wince and Elphaba pulled her third finger back, and then Glinda grabbed her shoulders and their lips contacted.

How strange, that the extent of Elphaba’s attention could so easily be absorbed by just two actions, and just one person. And then Glinda's body settled down upon Elphaba's fingers, and Elphaba could think of nothing but this one place, where their bodies met. Elphaba pushed up into her again, carefully this time, with two fingers poised in practiced elegance inside Glinda, and Glinda made an “Ohh” sound that made it all maybe worth it in the end. Her eyes and mouth were wide in what almost looked like surprise.

“You want me?” Elphaba asked her, even though Glinda was pulsing around her, pushing her hips down into Elphaba's hand, a look of pure abandon on her face.

“Ye - yes, yes,” Glinda told her. It was unmistakable, but her verbal affirmation supported Elphaba's inclination to think that this was probably the greatest sound of welcoming that a woman's body could give, in all that it was slick and popping, and Elphaba could feel the swelling hot spot inside Glinda pulsing in time with her attentions. Glinda was all breathy soft sighs and moans, and Elphaba was completely seduced by the sight and sounds of her.

“Yes,” Glinda whispered, and then she said, “I hate you, Elphaba, I hate you beyond compare, and if you had any decency at all you would,” and Elphaba curled her fingers into the soft spot on the other side of Glinda's pelvis and Glinda's body collapsed onto hers. Her full breasts and her taut stomach were hard against Elphaba, and Elphaba arched her back.

Glinda grasped her neck, without the tenderness she usually had in this, their lovemaking, and pushed herself up using mainly Elphaba's neck. Both of her nipples were hard, and her belly bulged as she bore down on Elphaba's fingers again, and again, faster.

Elphaba choked, grabbing at a nipple, and hooked her fingers, caressing Glinda, and Glinda ground her upright clit hard on Elphaba's palm. She threw her head back and put her other hand behind her back, plunging her fingers inside Elphaba.

Glinda's fingers tightened around her neck and inside her, and Elphaba was helpless for five glorious seconds. And then Elphaba realized that Glinda was coming, and the next ten seconds were torture, as she rode out Glinda's orgasm while being entirely pinned down by her, knowing that Glinda would end and Elphaba would have no chance at it.

Finally Glinda finished, and she let herself down on the mattress beside Elphaba, gasping.

Elphaba reached for her, and with limp hands Glinda batted her away. “Don't touch me,” she slurred, and Elphaba wrapped her arms around her own thin stomach.

“You're so gorgeous,” she babbled, and Glinda visibly hardened.

“I hate you,” she said again. “If only you could stick with what you said you would do…”

“You are engaged,” Elphaba reminded her. She wiggled closer. ”And all Oz knows why.”

Glinda shook.

“You let him into your bed, and now the only way -”

“It has only been you,” Glinda told her.

“You can't argue -”

“Elphaba, it was only you,” Glinda told her. “It has only ever been you. Please,” she said, and her blue eyes were depthless and so, so cold. “Please let this end.”

“Morrible will speak next week and there's no way that she can be silenced -”

“Quiet,” Glinda commanded. Somehow their bodies were close again. “Just be mine, Elphaba,” she pled.

They had no time. Elphaba would have gladly had Glinda on top of her again, but there was nothing for it but to follow Glinda's lead and roll on top of her, kissing up her chest to her neck, while Glinda's hips tried to pin Elphaba's thigh.

They were both of them soaked in sex, in sweat and syrupy welcoming juices, and for one very brief moment Elphaba felt nothing but Glinda, and it was perfect.

“Give me, give me,” Glinda pouted, and Elphaba chuckled, propping herself up to look at Glinda's face. She was a mess, deeply miserable, and Elphaba's abrupt happiness halted with the rush of remembrance.

“Fuck, Glinda,” she scowled, and Glinda shook her head and pulled Elphaba down against her. Their bodies were smooth against each other, Glinda's breasts soft and her breaths whispering against Elphaba's ear.

“Is this the last time?” Elphaba asked her, throat grating.

“No,” Glinda told her, and Elphaba pressed her hips down with both hands. “Never.”

Without even thinking Elphaba found her fingers between Glinda's legs, and Glinda welcomed her touch. What had started as a test turned instantly into wildness. What once was forbidden had become routine, and then it had turned into a need like breathing. Elphaba was helpless against the flow of their bodies against each other. She was attuned to Glinda's slightest movement.

Elphaba had never thought it would come to this. She thought that this was an amusement of Glinda's, something to pass the hours and days at school. That when they left school, Elphaba would lose Glinda and that somehow, she would carry on without her. She had habituated herself to the idea that Glinda would marry, would have children and leave Elphaba behind in a cloud of marital bliss.

She had not imagined that Glinda would want her like this. “Forever,” Glinda was moaning, between soft sighs, and her body was open and soft. The fierceness of their first meeting was replaced by a slow and deliberate grind, and Elphaba shifted her hand inside Glinda to find the upright nub outside that raised to meet her fingers.

Glinda trembled and shook when she found it. She dipped her hips and then thrust forward, and Elphaba slid deeper inside her, withdrawing, then sinking back in, and she wondered what “forever” could possibly mean.

A heat was building inside her, and without her intent, her thrusts became faster. Glinda's hands fell on her shoulders, and Elphaba buried her face between Glinda's breasts and fucked her. This was like the kissing - something Elphaba never knew she would ever enjoy - but it was Glinda's need that allured her. Glinda was everything. Glinda's body required attentiveness and care, and Elphaba had found that her own body needed to be inside Glinda as often and as fiercely as could possibly be arranged.

Glinda's hands tightened on Elphaba's shoulders at the same time as her cunt around her fingers, and her voice was raw and loud in the quiet of the night. “Yesyesyesyes,” Glinda sobbed, and Elphaba rubbed her nub deliberately, pulling back to watch her face.

Glinda twitched and then pulsed wetly, sighing in bliss. Her cunt gripped Elphaba's fingers, and Elphaba kept driving into her, harder and faster than she'd intended. This was the end, and she wished it was the middle or the beginning. She knew what Glinda meant when she complained that she'd peaked too quickly, but for Elphaba anything was too quick. If she'd been inside Glinda for an hour, she'd still wish that Glinda could have waited for longer yet.

When Glinda stopped, Elphaba wrapped her arms around her and felt her trembling. She was wet against Elphaba's lower belly, and Elphaba could not help herself but to move their bodies softly, grinding herself into Glinda, although she knew Glinda was spent. She wanted it all over again. She gripped Glinda's ass, pulling Glinda's leg up around her hip, and mimed what she imagined would be sex if she were a man, pushing her own pelvis hard into Glinda's wetness.

She saw stars, and gasped, as Glinda watched her with interest. Glinda's hands fell on her breasts, tweaking gently, and Elphaba thrust herself fruitlessly into Glinda.

It was no use. She dropped down and kissed Glinda. Glinda's mouth was dry, and Elphaba stuck her tongue into her mouth. Glinda made a sound of surprise and kissed her back. Elphaba buried her face in Glinda's neck, and Glinda rubbed her back in silence. Finally, Elphaba pulled away enough to look at Glinda. Glinda's eyes were glazed as she returned the stare.

“I should go,” Elphaba told her.

“Please stay.” Glinda's lips barely moved, and her hands gripped Elphaba's arms weakly.

Elphaba sighed and settled their bodies together again. She felt a flutter of movement against her stomach, and startled, but Glinda hushed her and did not explain.

Glinda slept soon after that, and Elphaba stayed awake until the sky began to brighten. She memorized every small detail of Glinda, as she had for so many nights before. She could almost feel the softness of Glinda’s hips if she looked hard enough. She could nearly kiss her, if she traced the shape of Glinda’s lips enough times.

Elphaba watched Glinda sleep, and considered the many, many meanings of “forever.”


	11. Chapter 11

Elphaba was never so happy awakened as she was in Glinda's arms. It was senseless because Elphaba herself was so unworthy of the experience, even just this one time.

Especially this one time. She had abandoned Glinda utterly, and that's what Glinda told her happened - not some nightmare of her own, but something she was accused of. Something she, perhaps, was guilty of. She tried to slither away, and Glinda unconsciously tightened her grip around her neck. Elphaba rubbed Glinda's arm lightly and tried again to escape.

Glinda woke in a startle, her eyes casting wildly about the room. Her grip stayed just as tight around Elphaba, and then her eyes fixed on her face.

With Glinda awake, Elphaba had to surrender to herself to her. “Welcome to the land of the real,” she said, her lips twisting ironically.

“Oh,” Glinda said quietly. It seemed as much a relic from the past as the two of them sleeping naked in bed together, and waking in the morning entwined. It was a girlish sound.

But Glinda rushed from the bed to the attached lavatory, and Elphaba followed after her gamely, hovering by the entrance to be sure that she was not sick.

It was a more mundane use of the toilet, so Elphaba leaned her back against the wall by the door and waited for Glinda. There was an invisible cord between them. Maybe only Elphaba felt it, but Glinda still called to her through it. Didn't she? Hadn't she? She closed her eyes and wondered if she should take this chance and escape through the window.

She didn't. Glinda emerged and regarded her, standing, with a guarded look.

“Good morning,” Elphaba offered her, and it seemed that was the worst possible way to re-open the day, because Glinda tossed her arms around Elphaba's shoulders and sobbed into her chest. Elphaba patted her back and murmured meaningless words of comfort, which did not help.

She hadn't thought they would. She had known, somehow, that Glinda was already inconsolable.

In an hour, Glinda was ready to let her go. But she told Elphaba in no uncertain terms that she expected her back in her room at sunset that day, and Elphaba promised that she would come, with no guilt because she knew as long as she was welcome, that she would not be able to stay away.

Morrible’s instatement as the press secretary went without a hitch. Elphaba had planned to take a gun and shoot her from a far balcony, or install explosives in the stage, but the explosives had been found and her gunpowder had not lit. Both plans were duds, and Elphaba left the ceremony before it was completed, hands clenched and failure a dark cloud over her head. She was followed, but after a harrowing chase through the dusty alleyways of the western edge of the Emerald City, she dodged her pursuers.

Glinda had come to the Emerald City for the event, and her nights would be busy for the next few days. They'd both agreed that it would be too dangerous to meet now - and Elphaba had agreed too quickly, thinking that after Morrible's death, Glinda would need a few days to recover her affection for Elphaba.

Not that her affection seemed fully intact, although their bodies met just as enthusiastically as before. Now, something stood between them, marring their connection, and Elphaba could not help but pin the blame on Fiyero. Fiyero, who was now Glinda's fiance, and must be her child’s father. That must be the separation Elphaba felt, and she found some small comfort in that, because if it was that, it was entirely Glinda's fault and not Elphaba's at all.

 

Elphaba had been informed that she should expect a new recruit for the opposition, and that he had absolutely insisted upon being assigned directly to her, a designation that she rejected. She'd clearly not made he point stringently enough, because her monkey guards pointed out a very white and sunburnt visitor, just an hour's walk away by trail.

It was just a few days after the party in honor of Morrible, and Elphaba still had not seen Glinda. She was waiting for her summons. She would not go begging.

When the visitor was twenty minutes from the moat (which had its drawbridge drawn), she took flight to meet him. Her dull suspicion flared to life as she approached him.

“You!” she said as she touched down from her broom.

“I have broken off the engagement,” Fiyero said, looking unsurprised by her early arrival. He stuck his chest out, but his eyes were solemn. “I could not bring myself to live that lie. I am here to join the opposition.”

All of the blood in Elphaba's body rushed to her head at once, making her physically faint. She put her hand on a gnarled, salt-edified tree, and waited until her ears stopped ringing.

“You left her.” Elphaba had not imagined this twist. “You were supposed to protect her. I trusted you to take care of her!” She was still in shock, but it was turning quickly.

“But I do not love her, Elphaba. I love -”

“Love has nothing to do with it! What of loyalty? What of friendship? Do you know what she will do, without you?”

He looked at her, lips thin. “You think she will terminate, but we both know how much she loves that child, and could not bear to lose it.”

“You underestimate her resilience.”

“How could you know?”

They faced off silently, and Elphaba broke first. She turned away, muttering, “You'd risk your own child on the hope that she is so sentimental.”

She knew she was provoking him, but when he approached, his body was far too close for comfort. Why did he insist on invading her space like this? She stepped away from him and turned.

His look was dark with something Elphaba did not want to name.

“You know well that this is not my child,” he said slowly. “But I know that _your_ affections lie elsewhere, regardless of what type of mistakes you might have made as -”

“Glinda and I were no mistake,” Elphaba informed him. Her spine was straight. She thought in the back of her mind that maybe this was the strongest affirmation of their relationship that she'd ever made, and Glinda wasn't even here to hear it. “She is my most dearly beloved, Fiyero, and you would do better to direct your affections away from me before you make a fool of yourself.”

He stayed dark, and then lashed forward, trying to contact her face with his lips. She stopped him fast with a slap, and he looked wounded.

“Stay a healthy distance from me and you won't suffer a crueler punishment than that,” she warned him. “But I need your help more than ever, so I won't turn you away. Let's look together.” She led him along the dead trail to the moat, where the drawbridge had been extended in wordless welcome.

She blustered through the entrance hall and up the stairs, bringing him to the very top of the tallest tower, only four stories above. She directed his attention to the new looking-stone she had found for her own use. It was five times the size of the last.

“My family,” Fiyero said behind her, and because she was too forgiving, she directed her attention to the Tigelaar home first of all.

It must have been some time since Fiyero left, because it was immediately apparent that the estate had been trashed. Elphaba moved her vision from room to room, finding nothing but empty tragedy. “They've been taken already,” Elphaba told him. Out of charity, she tried to color her tone with sympathy.

But as she turned to him, she could see that he could not make out anything in the scrying-stone. She sighed and sat him down to explain that his family - his sisters and their children, the nieces and nephews that had graced his unfortunate life before this moment - were now all held by the Wizard.

Then she turned her attention to Glinda, and found nothing at all.

 

She stormed through the Uplands’ estate, throwing open the doors without touching them. “Where is she?” she asked the servants, and none of them answered.

Finally, one offered the Emerald City. “She's not there,” Elphaba told him raggedly. He must be new; Glinda had always complained about the redheaded boy butler, the one Elphaba had seen spinning his wife under the lantern, and this man was dark and mustachioed. “I have looked a hundred times and _she is not there_. Yet - she is not dead. Tell me.” She gripped his collar and nearly lifted him off his feet. “Where is Glinda?”

“I don't know,” the man said frantically. “Please let me go.”

“She's in the Emerald City,” another servant told her, and Elphaba released the new butler and turned on her.

She flinched away, and Elphaba felt a passing regret that she could make this girl so afraid. “She is not in her apartments. I can't scry her. I can't _find_ her. Has the Wizard taken her captive? You must tell me what he has done to her. I swear to you that I am her friend.”

There were a few more of them, clustered in the hall. Elphaba addressed her plea to all of them.

“I swear that I will save her, or lose every last drop of blood in my body. I would do _anything.”_ Elphaba choked, and that was the unfortunate moment of Ms. Upland’s entrance.

“You,” the matriarch said challengingly. She was so like Glinda, an older Glinda, although Glinda had more steel to her than this woman.

It was hard to remember that when she was currently shooting daggers at her with her eyes. Elphaba straightened her shoulders. “Please tell me where Glinda is. You have no idea what's at stake.”

The lady paused only a brief heartbeat. “Stop ramshackling my home. You are no better than the Wizard. Go back to whatever swamp spawned you, you creature of filth and de-” it seemed that she thought better of the next adjective that sprang to her lips, because she did not finish the last word.

“Has he taken her captive, like Fiyero’s family? Is this the purge?” Elphaba could not breathe.

A momentary confusion stole over the woman's features, before she said, “Perhaps he has. What would you do? Would you stop pursuing her?”

“I would storm the jail,” Elphaba told her. “I'd set her free or die trying. She is the _only_ thing -”

“Maybe you should do that.” The woman's voice dipped in hatred, a tone that was oddly familiar to Elphaba's ears. “Get captured. I am sure that she does not want you to die, although it would be for the better.”

“Does the Wizard have her?” Elphaba asked quietly, trying to understand. “If he does not, please - maybe - would you take a letter to her, if I left one? Is she in hiding?” Elphaba's mind raced. “Has he threatened her? Or you?” But why would she hide?

Why, except that she would not go through with her threat to Elphaba, and she would keep their daughter and hide the baby from the world. If she was gone for three months, or four perhaps, Elphaba would know. That was the only way that this would make sense, if it was not the Wizard who held Glinda captive.

“You may leave one here,” Ms. Upland said, inscrutable.

Elphaba rummaged through her pockets, producing a grubby pencil and a more-filthy scrap of paper. Its original message had long since faded into the paper. She wrote against the wall.

_I need to see you again. I want to be with you now, and you have scared me enough that I would do anything to be assured of your safety and well-being._

She'd run out of space on both sides of the paper. She crammed in the word _please_ , and then she cursed. The inadequacy of words was always vexing, but the time and the pressure and the smallness of the scrap of paper nearly brought her to tears.

She heard the rustling of paper beside her, and looked up from between her arms to see that Ms. Upland had somehow disappeared and then returned with a full sheaf of papers. “There is a desk just there,” she told Elphaba gently. Raising her voice to the crowd that observed them, she said, “I am fairly certain that I pay you to work and not to gwap.”

No matter how many versions of the letter Elphaba wrote, she could never find the words that she thought would convince Glinda. She had busted her last chance the night Glinda summoned her to her room, and she had retracted her offer. Glinda, rightly, did not trust her. Would not trust her again.

Elphaba held onto the slight comfort of her theory. That Glinda had hidden herself away, feigning depression, in order to birthe their child. She'd bring the baby back with her, and pretend she'd adopted her. Her condition was so close to being plainly obvious that the wait would not be long. And if rumors to that effect would spread, it still would not be as politically damaging to have this child in secret. It would be an open secret, but not embarrassing - just a trick that the wily Glinda pulled on the world, one that everyone would choose to gossip about but otherwise ignore.

That was, if her daughter did not turn out green.

 

Glinda was gone for five long months. It was the worst wait of Elphaba's life, for all that she continued to leave letters at the estate. She poured every earnest inch of her heart out into the letters, and hoped that Glinda would read them.

What took her so long? Where was she? Had childbirth injured her? Ghostlike prickles of fear raised Elphaba's skin in goosebumps at her own lack of agency. Her paranoia deepened.

She had been relieved that Glinda had accepted her as her mistress, she slowly realized. She thought that even if it was a bad solution, maybe it was the best solution available to them. Although the thought of Glinda sharing her wedding bed with Fiyero was repulsive, some part of Elphaba truly thought that the bridge had already been crossed, despite Glinda's protests to the contrary.

And that way, Elphaba could remain involved without giving up what she had sworn to do. She wanted to rub Glinda's swollen feet and her aching back and be a part of this experience, even if Fiyero got the credit for putting her in this state. She'd hoped that Glinda's aggressive and temperamental depression would fade over time.

She'd given Glinda over to Fiyero, a sacrificial lamb for the cause, and everyone knew it at the time except for Elphaba herself.

She had not imagined this kind of torture, this not knowing, this _waiting._ She turned her energies to her work, and forgot Glinda for the duration of a strike, for hours during planning, only to remember and slam her hand into the table. When Fiyero asked about the bruising, she found somewhere else on her body to abuse, somewhere that he couldn't see.

She felt like she was moving through still water. Or like she wasn't moving, because the water had turned to tar and was slowly swallowing her up. Hungrily, like some beast of the deeps.

She wrote.

_You do not want me there. I know that I have passed on your many invitations to redeem myself, and somehow in the process I lost your trust. You do not want me there and I do not blame you in the slightest. But I -_

Elphaba struck out the line. She had to stop thinking about herself. _No more I._ What would Fiyero have done, in her shoes? Compromised.

_I know I have said it before but I must say it again, and again. I must compromise. I know it. Please let me back in. I have to be there._

_I don't know when this letter will reach you, but I imagine it has already happened. Just let me find you. Let us be together now. Let me into your space outside of the world. That's the only place I wanted to ever be, you know. Outside of the world, or hidden in our small space within it. Together in every sense, as we could never be in the real world._

_But if that is where you are now, that is the only place I want to be, and I wish that I had proven myself worthy enough to retain my invitation._

She remembered the bitterness in Glinda, in every moment that was not sex that they'd shared in their last two weeks. It was no wonder that Glinda had decided that her pain was not worth the pleasure. She had not offered what Glinda needed, and the physical reminder of what they had once shared was only painful to Elphaba now. It must have been painful for Glinda the moment she'd welcomed Elphaba back as her mistress, and Elphaba had been too blind with infatuation and selfishness to see it.

She imagined Glinda nursing a tiny infant, and there was no longer any doubt in her mind that it was what Glinda wanted. Elphaba could, in her lowest moments, believe that being shut out of that picture was just deserts for the wicked.

 

When Glinda reappeared in Elphaba's looking-stone, she was changed. Gone was the youthful flush of her cheeks, replaced by a sallow pallor. Her hair had lost its bounce and luster. The dress she wore concealed any other sign of what had happened in their months apart, but maybe it was the fog of the looking-stone that obfuscated those signs, and the dress was not responsible.

It was a minor event, a dinner, which Elphaba watched as was her habit. Mainly to gather gossip and see if there was a good new target for an attack. At this one, the only topic was Glinda. Even the people around her seemed incapable of ignoring Glinda's unexplained absence, although the hostess did protect her from the aggressive interest with something approaching charity.

A long illness, Glinda told them quietly, and somehow there was no doubting the veracity of _that._

Elphaba drank in every small movement of Glinda's fingers in the cutlery, and cursed herself for the bone-deep relief she felt that, at least, it seemed that Glinda herself was certainly alive.


	12. Chapter 12

That winter had been hard, much harder than their first. Elphaba had freed the Monkeys at the end of summertime last year, and all fall they’d wrecked and plundered and made their homes in wagons and in trees. They’d worked their way slowly around the radius of the “EC”, as Chistery liked to call the Emerald City, and then Gerald had told them of a recently abandoned castle and it was a race until first snowfall to reach it. They’d been flush with possibilities, and victory. They’d been so mobile, and the Wizard had not been prepared.

Now, guards were posted at all of the granaries. It was a matter of sneaking, or distracting the guards, and awfully dangerous at the end of it all. The Monkeys were her allies, but they had very different diets than hers - and while they were happy to help her in strategic matters, it was no longer strategically or logistically viable to hit food stores. At least not now.

That spring, a few Monkeys informed her that they intended to join a communal farm on the far side of the mountains, on the edge of Winkie Country. It was an Animal community. And this year, the trickle of Monkeys became a dozen, and continued to grow. They had fig and date trees, and plenty of water, and they were not in a war. Elphaba never blamed them, especially the ones with children.

She wouldn’t go begging to them for food. Instead, she and the remaining Monkeys made sweeps of the North in the fall. Unlike last year, these weren’t targeted. If anything they actually tended to hit the smaller provinces, which were too insignificant for the Wizard to guard. Elphaba knew that Glinda would be sure that food was distributed, enough to feed even the smallest hamlet, but she also knew that her actions would further sully her own name, and that they did not help her cause.

But they had to live. They stored the food in hidden places, and then moved on, and afterward Elphaba transported herself through space and gathered the food, the dried fruit and berries, handfuls of nuts. It was always a smaller amount than she had remembered. A few of the stashes had ants, but they kept the food anyway. In the arid reaches of Kiamo Ko, the ants tried to nest, and then Ben filled in the cracks with clay and in that way the ants were conquered.

That was Elphaba’s life, in the winter. Small problems. Ants in the stores. A scar that wouldn’t heal, on the inside of her ankle, and a pulled ligament from the same injury that continued to make her limp. Blankets that needed washing. Lots and lots of snow, which was harmless until it was not, and she burned.

The images in her looking-stone were always blurry. Her attention drifted. She continued to try to call up Glinda, and continued to fail. The details of politics in the EC were indistinct, and the more Elphaba ignored them, the more she realized that they didn’t matter. She’d only been watching to glimpse Glinda, or to help funnel information to Fiyero, and now what did it matter? Two more houses fell after the Tigelaars, and then the rest fell into line. The Wizard made plans to push out along the eastern and southern frontiers of his influence in the spring, and Elphaba ached to come to the rescue of the Quadlings while it could still matter. She did, sometimes, but Quadling Country was much too far from Kiamo Ko for the Monkeys to join her, and without them she was just one scrawny and desperate girl who thought that she could take on an army.

That was part of it, she realized. Beyond her own ambition, there was a reality. Yes, at one time she felt big enough to take on the Wizard single-handedly. But she hadn’t even quite graduated from school yet. She was just twenty-two, and sometimes flushed in embarrassment at the slightest provocation, while the older Monkeys patted her with parental affection. Many of the Monkeys, especially those who stayed with her, were much older and had seen much more than Elphaba had. She was humbled by them, and found family. She was constantly reminded of her own lack of experience.

She was achingly lonely. She sat huddled on her cot, or in the corner of her tower, and closed her eyes, and remembered Glinda. Not Glinda as she was when Elphaba last saw her, sorrowful and trembling and vulnerable as Elphaba had never seen Glinda before. Glinda in their school days, when their problems seemed only to reach as far as the school grounds. When Elphaba’s problem was being careful to react like a human being to Glinda’s touch, even though Glinda gave her as many touches in one day as Elphaba had in an entire lifetime before. To reassure Glinda, to reciprocate her attentions, to close her eyes and lose her own body and know only Glinda’s - to make Glinda laugh, to let Glinda go when she wanted to mingle with other people, to put down her damn book and look at Glinda when Glinda asked for it, and never to be bitter because she knew that it was too fleeting, and that Glinda would eventually recover from her temporary fascination with her greenness and Elphaba would be left alone again.

It hadn’t happened exactly that way. Glinda had loved her as much in their last day together as she had on their first. If Elphaba thought too long about it, she hated herself so deeply that she wished to melt into the stone of the tower and never be seen again. She should have known that Glinda was her only redemption. She should have held her close and precious and given anything and everything up for her, because that was what Glinda deserved.

It was only two years ago that Glinda had invited Elphaba to spend the winter at her parents’ estate, and like the bumbling fool she was, Elphaba had instead stayed at Shiz and availed herself of the libraries. It was near the end of their third year, and Elphaba had worried about her grades - or that’s what she told Glinda. Glinda had taken the rejection well, but she’d sent sorrowful glances Elphaba's way the entire week before she left. Elphaba had been convinced that she’d been right to say no.

Glinda hadn’t wanted to introduce her to her parents, not really. It was an insane thought of hers, not grounded in the reality of who Elphaba was. She'd introduce her either as her green roommate, or maybe her closest friend, or as her lover, and if Elphaba went with Glinda it would have to come down to one of those three, and be cemented as such forever. In some way she’d lose the other two options, she’d thought, and Glinda would lose the mystique of having a green friend, because once Glinda’s parents met Elphaba, she’d be reduced to the awkward beanpole who truly had nobody at all except Glinda.

And her parents would see instantly that Elphaba loved their daughter, which was the most dangerous thing of all, because Glinda could not see it, and must be prevented at all costs from knowing it.

 

 

Elphaba tried to ignore Fiyero for the entire week after he appeared. He'd knock at her door, and she would pretend that the sound was inaudible to her. Finally, Chistery told her that he wasn't sleeping, pacing his rooms in some type of fever, and she opened her door the next time he knocked.

He dove into the room in a daze. “Elphaba,” he said, and his eyes were not fully focused. “There are ghosts in that room. I am sure that my family has died and flown here just to torment me.”

She sat him down and forced him to drink tea. “There are no ghosts here,” she assured him.

“There are holes in the stairway, and I have fallen down them to my death, except that I am still standing there. I am haunted.”

He did look terrible. His hands trembled uncontrollably. He eyes were blood-red.

“What have you been eating?” she asked him. Maybe some of the fruit had gone sour, and he was poisoned.

He shook his head and said, “Elphaba, my family. Do you plan to help me? Should I go back and try to get in -”

She shushed him. “They are - not safe, but there is nothing to be done. The Wizard and Morrible know that we would free them, and they have set any manner of traps around them, as if I would not see them. They have set only a few guards, just to tempt us. And -”

She braced herself, preparing to give him the news, but his eyes were unfocused. “What is it?” she snapped.

He pointed wordlessly behind her, and she spun, looking for something that might have spooked him so.

There was nothing. “I don't see it,” she told him. “What is it that you see?”

“It's not real,” he moaned. He wrapped his arms around himself, looking utterly miserable.

Elphaba remembered, finally. She had still been young. It was before the birth of Shell. Their father had been away, and had left no money for the family. After a few months, her mother had collapsed and Nanny had explained to the young girls that it was from lack of that beastly Quadling beer. Melena, after all, had only been able to get through the day with a mug at her side.

“You're withdrawing from alcohol,” Elphaba told him, trying to forget her mother and focus on this man who was just as alone as she was.

He looked at her, comprehension coming slowly. “I brought a flask, but had the last on the day I arrived,” he told her.

“Good that you did, or you'd have died in the salt desert,” Elphaba told him, businesslike.

“I asked the Monkeys if they had any… you don't…?”

“I don't,” she confirmed. She felt a little bit bad for him, but then remembered what he'd done to Glinda and her anger came back. “You'll stay here and I'll be sure that you eat and drink. It will pass.”

It did pass, but it got worse before it got better. At the end of the week, he was able to stand unassisted, and he was ready to hear what the Wizard was doing to his family.

“Morrible is wiping their memories, and then they are being released into the streets of the Emerald City  It's a powerful spell.”

“A death sentence,” Fiyero choked.

“Worse, because I can still find each of them. They do not know themselves, or each other. They have quickly learned to beg, learned to buy and steal, but -”

“I have to take care of them.” With such a look of determination on his face, Fiyero was almost handsome.

Elphaba sighed. “They are watched, but not as closely as the jail that they're being kept in before the treatment. One per day. Their absence will be instantly missed, you know,” she added. “There is snow on the ground. It is past the time to be travelling. We have no food here. They are weak.”

“Then I'll bring them blankets and food over the winter, and in the summer I will bring them here.”

Elphaba rubbed her temples. “And where will you find these blankets? The food? Will a blanket help in the dead of winter?”

“I have to do something. We can take your broom there, and you can carry them back to Kiamo Ko, quickly.”

“We have _no food_ ,” Elphaba stressed. “This is not a shelter.”

“You owe me,” he told her.

“I _owed_ you. Now you have made a decision that you can't face the consequences of, and made yourself and a dozen dotards my responsibility, when I have a - a -” She couldn't quite say “mission.” She'd called it that during her fights with Glinda. She wouldn't call it that again.

She realized that Glinda had probably foreseen this extremity of punishment from the Wizard. It was why she continued to beg Elphaba to compromise. It was much worse that Elphaba herself had ever imagined, but Glinda must have known.

And Fiyero's position was impossible. He had no-one but her.

“There is a tavern-keeper in the south EC who has a small warehouse below his tavern. I can ask him for a favor, and he'd likely let me keep a dozen people there over the winter. Either way, I trust him.” Elphaba turned to find him smiling gratefully at her. “He won't give us up to the Wizard,” she finished, and then added in irritation, “You're on your own for food and blankets, and same goes if you want to bring them here later.”

“Thank you, Elphaba. I guess the Resistance isn't just one person, after all.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “If you think this is what you deserve, you're wrong. After what you did to Glinda, you don't deserve any favors.”

His face fell. “How is she?” he asked after a moment.

“I don't know.” Elphaba's heart squeezed in her chest, a feeling akin to panic consuming her for a moment. “I can't find her.”

“She's… gone?” Fiyero frowned.

“She's left the Wizard's court, and she's not at home. She's hiding from me. Nobody talks about her, not that I can hear.” They did talk about her, but had no answers. It was the same to Elphaba.

“It makes no sense,” Fiyero said dumbly.

“It makes plenty of sense,” she snapped at him. She checked the sky. “Will you be well enough to leave tomorrow morning? I'll help you find them, and negotiate with the tavern. But no longer than a week.”

He was back to being grateful, which appeased Elphaba somewhat. But when he'd been squared away, her thoughts still lingered. _Glinda._ It was the beginning of a long winter.


	13. Chapter 13

Shortly after Glinda's inauspicious reentry into society, the Wizard sent his forward vanguard to Munchkinland.

It was only a few days’ march from the EC to the border of the frontier. The Eminent Thropp of Munchkinland, Elphaba's grandfather, outwardly welcomed the Wizard's troops. Elphaba, of all people, knew that it made no practical difference at all what he said.

Melena had never spoken to Elphaba about her childhood. Elphaba had no idea how the princess of Munchkinland, the Third Descending after Elphaba's great-aunt and uncle, ended up so miserably married to the ascetic Frexspar. It was a misstep of epic proportions, which had left the Thropp line in a spot of trouble as the descendants were successively survived by His Throppiness Himself, leaving Elphaba and Nessarose at the end of the line.

Not that it mattered. The Thropp territories, and the influence of the old name, had eroded faster than the bloodline did. This Elphaba gathered through careful and mainly silent observation, and not because anybody felt the need to explain it to her. She hadn't even realized that anyone would know her name until she arrived at Shiz, so degraded was their position and influence, even in the civilized North.

Even after all this time, Frex remained in Quadling Country, paying off some debt to the Unnamed God that Elphaba preferred not to know about. He kept her brother, Shell, with him there. Elphaba had not spoken with her father since their parting midsummer between her first and second years at school, although they had exchanged letters sporadically. It was hard to maintain correspondence when half the letters to and from Quadling Country did not reach their destination.

Nessarose had never returned to Quadling Country after they started school. She had explained to Elphaba, although Elphaba didn't ask, that she felt it was too dangerous to bring Nanny all that distance.

It was just that Nessarose far preferred His Eminent Thropp's residence in Munchkinland, Colwen Grounds. They'd never visited while Melena was alive, but Frex had arranged that his daughters’ trip from the South to Shiz passed directly by the historic high seat of Munchkinland. Even at that time, it had felt slightly dangerous to travel that far into the countryside.

Colwen Grounds was not grand. It wasn't homey either, or even exotic. In its own way it was as classless and without aesthetic as the Quadling residences, in all that they were suspended by poles and wires from the tall swamp trees, connected by precarious rope bridges and the occasional drifting raft.

Elphaba had always found Quadling Country as exciting and beautiful as it was dangerous. She thought some of her Quadling associates were her friends. Generally the Quadlings did not think as much of her green skin as they did Nessarose’s white. Elphaba preferred the taunts about her foreignness, her accent, her lame _sister,_ to the taunts she vaguely remembered from Munchkinland.

Melena had her own taunting routine - hers about Elphaba's fear of the ponds. Her mother had told her that if she did not learn to swim, she'd surely die of drowning. That was, when she paid attention to Elphaba at all.

Elphaba had learned to suppress her instinctive terror of the water. She'd learned to tread lightly on the wooden bridges, and avoid the rafts, and somehow she survived her childhood even with Nanny preoccupied by caring for Nessa and nobody paying any particular attention to where Elphaba was, or where she went, or if her skin was, for even a short moment, smoking.

The water left lighter-colored scars that faded over months back into the fierce vegetal color. When Elphaba found that out, she tried leaving the water on her skin a bit longer, thinking that the bleaching effect might be enhanced. She still had _that_ scar, an ugly black-and-green rash on her upper arm. When Glinda asked about it, Elphaba told her that it was from a house fire that she'd been caught by, and not her own foolhardy self-harm driven by the desire for sameness.

In some ways, she felt more distressed by her skin now than she had during her school years. Glinda had been a salve to a lifetime of not belonging. Glinda always insisted that her greenness was one of her most favorable attributes, and Elphaba had believed it for short moments in time. Now, her skin made it impossible to work undercover. It made her instantly recognizable, and turned her tactics from subterfuge to guerrilla warfare.

She bombed the supply wagons for the forward vanguard until she ran out of bombs, and they learned to turn their guns to the air and keep their eyes on the sky. And when the vanguard began to approach the Eminent Thropp's residence, she finally visited her sister.

After graduation, Nessa had been staying in a large room at the rear of the residence. The closets were large, and Nanny stayed in a room down the hallway, which afforded Nessa more privacy than she'd ever enjoyed before. Her sister was happy here.

Elphaba paused only a second to steel herself before knocking briskly.

“Oh, Boq, you came early!” Nessa’s wheelchair rattled on the other side of the door.

“It is your sister,” Elphaba told her quietly, and the rattling ceased instantly.

“Why are you here?” Nessa asked her. Her question seemed genuine, if tinged with some kind of judgement that Elphaba could not identify specifically.

“The Wizard is coming. He will be here in only a few hours. You must _run,_ Nessa. You'll be his prisoner, or worse.”

Nessa scoffed. “Do you plan to open the door, Elphaba?” she asked crossly.

Elphaba opened the door with hesitation. Her sister was halfway made-up, in a white flowery frock of her style. They regarded each other silently.

Her sister had always perpetuated the disdain that the rest of the world held for Elphaba. If anything, her scorn was harsher because of her own disability. Elphaba knew this logically, but as with most things, logic only brought her so far. This was still her sister. She wanted to tell Nessa what she'd seen, in Glinda's estate, just a few days ago. Two infants in two separate cribs. One redheaded and a girl, and the other blond and smaller and male. Both flushed with health and life, and cared for by the maid and the ginger butler, who called them _twins_. The family had returned to the estate at the same time as Glinda showed her face at the party in the Emerald City. Elphaba was certain that only one of the so-called twins was related by blood to Glinda's servants.

She wanted to tell Nessa, regardless of the scandal, and she had no idea whether she'd say it with pride or embarrassment or shame, or some other emotion that Elphaba had not yet dredged up out of the soup that was her chest.

To Elphaba's relief, Nessa spoke first. “You look terrible. You've been living on acorns and rabid squirrels, I'm guessing. Did you know that Grandfather disowned you?”

All news to Elphaba. She shrugged. “It doesn't matter. None of the houses hold their own land any more. Haven't you been paying attention?” She still looked down at herself self-consciously. Her robe _was_ frayed and badly patched. And her hands were dirty. She'd let her fingernails grow out, and dirt was caked with TNT under them.

Nessa just scoffed. “What do you know of civilization? I wasn't even sure you were alive, and honestly didn't care in the slightest.”

“You have to flee, Nessa.”

“And where would I go? Are you offering me a safe haven to live in, or whatever nest you have made for yourself in the wilderness?” Her voice turned condescending. “Did you know that you have twigs in your braid, Elphaba.”

Elphaba scowled at her. “Don't you know what happened to Fiyero's family?”

“I don't, and further, I do not care.” Nessa tossed her hair over her shoulder and turned her chair back to the vanity. “Now, I am expecting a guest, so you had best leave.”

“I won't save you,” Elphaba warned her darkly.

“You shall see that I do not need saving,” Nessa said haughtily.

So Elphaba left her there. She should have been more worried for her grandfather than she was for Nessa, if only she cared about him at all. With her attention turned back to the servants’ tiny home and the two babies there, by all accounts her grandfather collapsed in frailty and died upon the arrival of the Wizard, and only by coincidence.

Suddenly Nessa was Thropp First Descending, with only an aunt between her and the title. The aunt was already holding the seat in the Wizard's Council, but Elphaba thought her to be sufficiently dull as to be beneath the Wizard's attention.

She sent her aunt a letter by monkey, wishing the new Eminent Thropp good health in perilous times. She was dead of "heart trouble" before the letter reached her.

 

 

Glinda left the EC as quickly as she'd appeared. She didn't even attend a Council meeting before she was gone; she stayed only a few weeks. Elphaba caught a glimpse of her riding a horse through the city to the train station, and thought to herself that it was strange that she didn't know that Glinda rode so excellently.

Then she was gone, and Elphaba could not follow her. She couldn't target Glinda with her scrying at all - she could only glimpse her if her focus had already been established in a place, and even then, Glinda often succeeded in pushing her out of the frame. The party had been the first and last time Elphaba had succeeded in actually focusing her scry on Glinda herself, ever since this debacle had reached its head in October.

So Elphaba couldn't trace Glinda's movements until she arrived at the estate, three days after her departure from the EC. It was midday, and by nightfall two wagons had been loaded with supplies - and the tiny servant family, the focus of Elphaba's undivided attention these past weeks.

Elphaba could not help herself but to step to the roof of the barn. She crouched there and heard the strain in Glinda's voice, although she couldn't hear the words, and the deep tones of the butler's voice reassuring her.

They left that night, and Elphaba followed them. The butler drove the front wagon, with the rear following closely by hitch, and its own horses. She heard the babies’ fussing. She heard Glinda speaking in low tones inside the wagon.

She followed the note of Glinda's voice eagerly. She listened to the interplay of the baby’s voice with Glinda's, and wondered which baby Glinda held.

Glinda had been sure that her baby would be a girl, yet the girl was unmistakably redheaded, like the butler. So was it the blond boy? She watched, and waited, and alit on trees to let them pass as closely as she dared so that she could listen.

The wagon eventually quieted down, and the butler began to look spooked, so Elphaba widened her circles and watched less closely. The wagon was quiet only in fits and bursts, and they travelled through the night and the next day, until they reached an inn that they seemed to know.

It was the afternoon, and the inn had only three rooms. Elphaba lurked in the woods just beyond, blocked from coming closer by the expanse of golden field that separated the inn from the wood.

She wondered if that was an apt metaphor, and chuckled to herself. Solitude made her crazy.

This situation made her crazy. She could not sleep, lest they slip away. So she waited until dark, and crept closer, so that she could see through the window.

It was the little blond boy that Glinda held. She watched as Glinda spoke soft words to him. In awe, she saw the first smile on Glinda's face in what felt like a lifetime.

She knew she was invading a space where she was not welcome. She'd found out what she needed to know. Their destination was not important.

Still she watched, until they turned out the lamps and there was nothing left to watch.

 

Finally, after nearly a month of absence and distraction, she returned to Kiamo Ko. The castle was filled with empty-eyed former Gillkinese nobles, and Elphaba locked herself in her tower and waited for Fiyero to corral his family away before she'd speak to him at all.

When that was finished, he sat her down with whiskey and she told him everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N This should not come as a surprise. Like everyone who posts writing online, I love reviews. Kudos help, but don't really help me figure out what is working and not working in the story. I have nearly the entire arc planned out, and I'm thinking it will be about 20 or 25 chapters total.
> 
> Just because I have plans doesn't mean that they won't change, if I get a good healthy critical review! I know that I've put everyone through a blender and that this is a different approach than most writers take with this pairing, so I know that the feedback I might get is more likely to be negative than positive. But trust me - I have done far worse or characters that are far nicer than these two.
> 
> This is also a bit of a pivot in the story. While politics was playing away in the background for the first half, now that we're firmly entrenched at Kiamo Ko, it is going to get a lot more politicky and war-focused, because that is what Elphaba is doing; it's also going to skip forward in time more quickly. You probably saw that in the last few chapters.
> 
> So, if you are reading, and you get to this point, I'd really like to invite your feedback in whatever form it takes. Lay it on me.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Gayest of All Gays,
> 
> chipperdyke


	14. Chapter 14

Elphaba lay on her cot looking at the pointed hat on her shelf for a long time. She'd worn the hat during her audience with the Wizard, when she'd first been tricked by him, when she'd left Glinda the first time.

It was three years ago now, and Elphaba hadn't wanted to wear the hat again. She'd wanted to keep it, relatively unsullied as it was, a testament to Glinda's love and the life she'd hoped to live when she first put it on. A life with Glinda, if she was honest. A life of good.

But she was so tired now, and it was so important that she was _not_ tired. She should be indefatigable, and fearless, and all the things that seemed so possible at that moment so long ago in the Emerald City, when she felt she could not possibly be silenced. Maybe the hat was what she needed to be strong again, as she had been before everything went wrong. 

She stood, slowly, and took the hat from its perch. And she placed it on her head.

They marched that night for Munchkinland, Fiyero's family in their weird gray-and-red uniforms, so like the Gale Force in their way. The recruits they'd gotten since the Wizard's crackdown on Munchkinland, and the Monkeys that were left, all led by Chistery, who did have a strategic head on his shoulders.

Some wore the heralds which Fiyero had so carefully assembled, and he called Elphaba's. Some wore those of Ozma, who was and who could be again, in some future. And some wore the heralds of their own lands, the Thropps and those who preceded them.

They all sang the old song, which Elphaba had not even recognized before it became the men’s favorite. “Oh ey oh, oye, oh,” they sang as they marched from her salt-encrusted fortress, and she flew before them, leading the way to the East, to the territories that had once been hers by birthright. To defend the Munchkins, who rebelled against the Wizard’s rule - finally, as nobody else had - to take the Wizard down to size, or at least, to try.

They barely made it a day before the rain began. It was unseasonable in mid-July, but Elphaba's indignation would not stop it. It started in sheets so heavy that they couldn't see the person in front of them, and Elphaba walked with the men and wrapped herself in the leather she'd oiled for this purpose, the knee-high thick boots, wrapping herself head-to-toe and refusing to be afraid.

That night, they made camp at the top of a hill. They were already diminished. What had looked like an army, proud in their uniforms, now was shown for what it was: a ragtag and unruly set of seditionists of barely three dozen, marching to take on a real army that clearly already knew they were coming. This rain was no accident.

They did have bayonets, and gunpowder, and food, the things that Elphaba and the Monkeys had struggled with last year. Fiyero's family was most of the reason why. Although their memories were wiped, Fiyero could remember for them. If he coached them well, they could begin to help him manipulate the connections they'd had in their old life. Alternatively, because they were indistinguishable from the average Gillikin, they could infiltrate the Gale Force and either steal and leave, or stay and spy.

And they were unswervingly loyal to Fiyero, who was their cousin or brother or son. They treated him all the same as their savior, no matter their old roles in his life, and Elphaba observed Fiyero vacillate between mourning and confusion. On one hand, their thoughtless devotion proved to him every single day that not a shred of their own identity had remained. On the other, with two dozen blank slates, Fiyero wrote himself what he thought he and Elphaba needed.

When Fiyero told them they had to follow Elphaba, they began literally trailing her, until he corrected them. When he told them that they needed to train and become strong, they did it with gusto. They had no hobbies. They had nothing to gossip about, and no distraction from Fiyero's directives except to engage in leisurely and frequently incestuous behavior, which Fiyero tried to outlaw. He only partially succeeded at it, leading to pregnancies that meant that some of the women stayed back at Kiamo Ko.

It was vaguely sinister to Elphaba, like brainwashing, but she did not reject their attempts to help her. Over time, the sound of them training in the morning became routine. She began to trust them.

The proliferation of activity, of inhabitants, improved the appearance of Elphaba's castle. What once was a ruin became somewhat more habitable, especially in the places Elphaba visited less frequently - the kitchen and the courtyard, the kennels and stables. The castle was still relatively empty, but now the sound of children playing echoed sharply down the hallways. They had learned that on their own.

Elphaba slept in a tree that first night of their march. It was an art she'd perfected, not that she was normally a heavy sleeper, and not that she ever moved when she slept anyway. The water shed off her leather-tented body and by the next morning she felt nearly dry, although her hands tinged alertly with the heavy moisture in the air.

There was no chance of fire that first night. They'd brought little water, and by mid-morning a sickness overtook the troops. Like the forgetting that had struck Fiyero’s family, the sickness moved quickly to eliminate them, sending them with stomach cramps to the wayside, and eventually draining the color from their faces and slowing the speed of their walk, until Fiyero called rest again in the early afternoon.

“Are you scared?” a girl asked Elphaba as she moved between the afflicted. Her face was white, and Elphaba could not immediately tell whether she'd been struck, too. She pushed the girl's cowl away and put the back of her bare hand against the girl's face.

The girl flushed hotly and stood trembling while Elphaba looked at her. She had come to Kiamo Ko a teenager, and became much more a woman in the year that had passed. “Juliette.” Elphaba remembered her name. “There is no sense in fear. Mistakes are made because people are afraid. Better to pause and separate your fear before deciding what to do.”

“And what will we do?” Juliette asked Elphaba.

“You seem to be fine. You will move with the vanguard. The rest will trail more slowly behind. We will weather this storm, and come out stronger by the end of it.”

Juliette nodded, and Elphaba moved away, feeling the girl's gaze on her back for a long time after.

 

Finally, the storm faded. The vanguard encountered travelers on the road to the East, and Elphaba was certain that half of them were spies. Maybe, all of them. There was nothing to be done, and she answered even the most prying of questions forthrightly - “Yes, I am the Witch, who opposes the Wizard. Yes, we march to Munchkinland. No, I do not plan to take his throne. You tell me - who has come to age during the Wizard’s rule, and not ascended to her rightful place? Not _me._ Am I a pagan, devoted to the Fairy Queen and her spawn? Are _you_ from Oz at all?” 

And so it went, with Elphaba trying to keep her temper in check while she was ceaselessly barraged by questions from passers-by. Those of Fiyero's family who had fallen ill caught back up with them. They cleaned their uniforms, and all was back to as it had initially intended to be.

Finally, on the fifth day, when they were still halfway through their journey, they came upon a block in the road. They had a few runners, who brought the news to Elphaba and Fiyero.

“What do you think?” Fiyero said, eyes bright. “Should we try the broom?”

Elphaba scowled at him in irritation. “I will scry,” she told him, and he shrugged good-naturedly.

His skill at watching over her shoulder had improved, and he stood behind her as she brought her Quadling crystal up to eye-level. As if the crystal remembered the last thing that she had scried, Elphaba's son appeared in the glass.

He was toddling, nearly falling forward, hair in disarray, pudgy white fingers reaching out in front of him. At first it looked like he was alone, but she kept her focus on him despite herself and saw that he was with a few other children, trying to keep up with the oldest, and escorted by his ersatz peasant mother and an ugly old nan. They must be having an outing in the nearby town.

Elphaba blew out her breath and switched to the road. They sped along it, and found that it was only four men, although with rifles. Maybe it was just a toll. She flitted about the area, and found nothing else of concern - no snipers in the bushes, no traps or magic.

“We’ll go, ask them to leave,” she muttered to Fiyero. “They’re no blockade.”

“They won’t believe that you’ll kill them,” Fiyero told her. “Because we both know you won’t.”

“And you will?” Elphaba turned to him in irritation, which fled quickly at his knowing look.

“I will bring the Strikers -” a terrible, terrible name for his home-trained family members “- with me, and you can stay behind.”

She shrugged. “I will watch from above.” She accepted that he likely knew best. Except that as he approached the blockade, Morrible was standing there, in the middle of the road.

Elphaba had no idea that anybody could block her scrying but Glinda. She instantly smelled a trap, and stepped through space to face Morrible before the trap could be sprung.

“Elphaba Thropp,” Morrible greeted her distantly.

Elphaba had landed close, and stepped closer, even though it was within easy reach of the Gale Force troopers. At least it was likely not within the radius of the trap, if there was one. Hopefully Fiyero would see her there and change his plan of approach.

She smelled Morrible’s awful fish breath. “You’d do best to let us through,” Elphaba told her.

“I know everything,” Morrible told Elphaba. “Until now, you’ve been a fly buzzing, and nothing more. Take this as _your_ warning, my dear.” Her voice sounded just as it had in school. Elphaba shook in disgust and rage. “If you mean to complicate our retaking of Munchkinland, you will find that the consequences will be dire for those you love.”

“I love nothing, and nobody,” Elphaba told her throatily. “And you do not have as much power as you think.”

“Are you willing to take that chance?” Morrible asked her knowingly, and then she turned her heel, snapping her fingers at the police. They followed her down the road, leaving Elphaba standing, shaken and unsure, in the middle of the road when Fiyero finally reached her.

She didn’t tell him, or anyone, what happened. But she did think about it. There was plenty of time for thinking.

She thought about what she wished she'd told Morrible. “Why won't you just take over power and stop bowing to the Wizard?” Maybe Morrible would have given her some clue, if she'd asked. “How could you have wiped Fiyero's family's memories?” Maybe Morrible would confirm that it was her that did it, and not some other magician. It would be good to know her enemies. “Why couldn't you have been good?” That one just spitefully, because it was the last regret Elphaba had about her old mentor.

But she thought about Morrible's threat more. She thought about Glinda, and their son, and what Morrible might do. A domestic incident could turn the boy blind, or make him a cripple, and Glinda would never know the difference between malicious intent and accident.

She thought that probably there might be something to help, but didn't know what, exactly. The Grimmerie might have an answer, but she had left it safe in Kiamo Ko.

In her anxiety, she finally stepped through to the servants’ cottage. She lurked outside and listened to their snoring, mumbling half-forgotten words for sleep until she was sure she wouldn't be disturbed.

And then she opened the door and walked into their bedroom. The other baby stirred, but her son did not.

Glinda had called him Charles, and the servants called him Charlie. Elphaba did not call him anything but “my son,” although as she stood there and finally set her eyes on him, she thought probably that his given name suited him.

His eyes were open, and unafraid as he looked back at her from the depths of his crib. His still-blond hair made a halo around his head. It was hot here, and he had kicked off his blanket, so that the diaper was the only thing between him and air.

He kicked gently, pushing his blanket farther away, and Elphaba shook herself and pulled out her vial. She smeared the valuable oil on her thumb and then, lightly, on the baby's head. “Be safe, and well, and if you are not, call for me and I will come,” she vowed as she baptised him. She did not know if this would work, but couldn't help but try.

He gurgled and stuffed his fist in his mouth, and Elphaba tried to sigh to release the tightness in her chest. In another world, this baby would know her. She'd be the one wading through babyhood with him, and Glinda. Maybe she'd have seen his first steps. Certainly he would have torn out enough hair to make her hair thinner, as he'd done with the servant girl.

She wanted to pick him up and hold him, just for a moment. Instead she took his other hand. He wrapped his fingers around one of hers. “Charlie.” She tried the name out. “Charlie, you must be safe.”

She stepped through space rather than letting his hand go. Her fingers were sticky when she arrived back at camp.


	15. Chapter 15

Elphaba was alone.

She watched from afar as the Munchkin rebels were found by the Gale Force. They had never revealed the location of their hideaway, but reticence did not protect them.

She was alone as she led her own troop through the night, toward the battle that raged, with the hope that they might turn the tide.

She flew overhead, alone, as the Gale Force slaughtered those she’d hoped to have as allies.

She watched alone as her troop ran, tails between their legs in their retreat towards Winkie Country, that last bastion of opposition. The West. As they retreated, Elphaba stopped at Colwen Grounds with the hope that she could talk with her sister once again.

It was a trick sneaking in. She waited in Nessa’s bedroom, as she had waited in Glinda’s bedroom long ago, but here she was fidgety and jumped at any slight sound. The house staff had tripled in size since the appointment of Nessarose as the new governor of Munchkinland, which barely made sense. It had been nearly a generation since the Thropps collected any taxes at all, but the money came from somewhere. Elphaba worried that what looked like house staff were actually prison guards. She hated herself for it, but part of her hoped it was so.

It was the week of the Council meeting, which Nessa never attended. There was no representative of Munchkinland at the Council meetings at all, which perhaps was because Munchkinland was now under military and not political rule.

Things had changed on the Wizard’s Council since Fiyero left. In three months it would be two years since he was gone, and if Elphaba had been in the position of guessing, she would have thought that the Wizard’s power would have been complete by this time.

She’d underestimated Glinda. She always did, somehow, but this time it was because she'd assumed that the change in the Council was because of Fiyero's departure and the brutal way his family was dealt with. She hadn't considered the effect of Glinda's absence.

But by the time Glinda attended her first Council meeting, around this time last year, it was apparent that the Council shifted into a new configuration when Glinda paid politics any attention at all. It was two months after the Wizard's first foray into Munchkinland, and the Gillikin Councilmembers were frothing with discontent. Glinda didn't say more than a few words during that meeting, but the sweeping change in rhetoric by the rest of the members spoke more loudly than a speech would have. She was entering a battleground that during the last meeting had been fragmented, with opposition to the Wizard's invasion taking three separate stances. At the end of Glinda's first Council meeting, the opposition had one stance only, one that hadn't existed before that meeting: It was too expensive to launch an invasion, and the Wizard should pull his troops back and resort to sanctions instead.

Sanctions! Nobody on the Council had never even aired the idea before that meeting. Likely it was because Munchkinland was considered a part of the Oz that was, and putting sanctions in place would require acknowledging that, for all intents and purposes, Munchkinland was not a part of the Wizard's kingdom, and had not been for a long time.

With the opposition united, the brunt of the invasion had been delayed for long enough that the Munchkins had time to dig in. What would have likely been a devastating slaughter became an excruciating war of attrition, with the Wizard forced to cut costs at every opportunity. Glinda had endeavored to give the Munchkins a chance, which they had squandered due to lack of resources and perhaps an excess of optimism.

It was not clear what would happen now, with the defeat of the Munchkins’ last stronghold, but Elphaba wondered if the Wizard’s appetite for invasion would be sated and perhaps peace would come to the war-torn country. Part of her wondered if it might be better, if Nessa was in charge. Maybe this loss would herald a new age, at least in Munchkinland - a more civilized one, even if it meant that Munchkinland was under the Wizard's thumb once again.

A Munchkin opened the door to Nessa's room, and nearly shrieked. Elphaba hushed him, surprised to recognize his face - it was Boq, from Shiz.

“I am just dropping by for a quick visit,” she whispered. Nessa was peering over Boq’s shoulder in her chair. “Won't you come in and close the door?”

“Elphaba,” Boq gasped, and he looked back at Nessa, clearly awaiting her direction.

“Oh, do as she asks,” Nessa told him, and so he pulled her chair into the room and closed the door behind them.

“I wanted to be sure that you are safe, Nessa,” Elphaba told her softly. “After what happened to our grandfather… I was unsure that your stay here was voluntary.”

“You wanted another chance to take the throne, more likely.”

Elphaba scoffed. “I would have gone to the Wizard if I wanted that,” she told Nessa. “I have come to you because I worry about you.”

“After abandoning me for three years? I should believe that? No, you have some other trick. You'll take Boq away from me,” she said wildly, and reached for Boq.

Boq was just out of her arm’s reach, and Elphaba noted that he did not come closer as Nessa beckoned. Instead he watched Elphaba carefully. He had been a nice kid, at Shiz, and Elphaba wondered how the years had changed him.

This visit wasn't for Boq, though. “Tell me that you are here according to your own wishes and not as a prisoner, and I will leave straightaway,” Elphaba told Nessa. “But if you are not, and the Wizard is forcing you…”

“He's offered me the entire of Munchkinland,” Nessa told Elphaba proudly. “Why should I run away now?”

That should have been enough answer for Elphaba, but her eyes slipped to Boq, questioning. He looked expressionlessly back at her.

“Well,” Elphaba said finally. “I will have Colwen Grounds watched on the first two nights of the full moon each month, and if you need my help, put a blue light in your window.”

Nessa shuddered. “Don't send your creepy minions to look through my window, Elphaba. I don't need your help.”

Elphaba sighed. “Very well,” she said, and mounted her broom to follow her retreating troop. They had mainly scattered for safety, but the largest group was with Fiyero. It was the ones who had nothing but the distinctive uniforms of Fiyero's design, and who refused to steal replacement clothes. The proudest of Fiyero's Strikers, or the stupidest.

She caught them in a field on the border of Munchkinland, fighting for their lives against a platoon of the Gale Force.

She landed behind the Gale Force and lit the field on fire. Her command of the wind was limited, but it was easy to direct what wind there was toward the troops’ backs. They began turning toward her, and she swooped upward, a shadow just beyond the flickering flames.

This time, she looked more closely at the lines. The Gale Force was mid-advance, and engaged in melee with a few of Fiyero's Strikers, while the rest of the Strikers fell back, frantically trying to reload their rifles.

That was Fiyero, on the front of the line. He batted away a scimitar with the barrel of his rifle, and then a few shots fired invisibly and he staggered.

They were on him, and Elphaba thought at first it was the Strikers’ chance. Instead the Strikers turned and ran, the line breaking, allowing the Gale Force to commit fully to their murder.

Elphaba dropped from the sky upon them. She had one more pipe bomb, and dropped it just before she landed, which at least succeeded at scattering the Gale Force a bit.

Fiyero was heavy, but she was still mainly aloft, and only needed to fling him over her knees and get airborne again. She managed it without a bit of grace.

She flew just far enough to be sure that they couldn't follow her, and landed - or, nearly crashed, as Fiyero's weight threw her landing off. He made no sound as he flopped onto the grass at the top of the hill.

He was breathing, and she had magic enough for a few bullet holes in his chest. His breath still wheezed, and he did not open his eyes, but she thought that he would live. She curled around his body and slept on the ground for the first time in months.

She dreamt a future that might have been. She dreamt that she had no magic for Fiyero's wounds. She thought she turned him on his back, and his eyes were partially open, reflecting the stars. She put her hand on his chest, wishing that she knew some way to preserve his heart. His blood soaked the grass, running in rivulets, and mingled with her helpless tears until she slept, clutching his body tightly. When she woke, he was ice-cold and stiff and his face wasn't Fiyero's anymore, but a corpse’s, and she left him at the top of that hill for the wolves.

But it was only a dream. When she woke, his body was warm, and his face was his own.

She flew the rest of the way home with his body resting over her knees. She remembered how she felt before visiting Nessa: alone. She realized that she hadn't been. That there had been Fiyero, and she could have stopped at any time for no reason but to seek his companionship. She hoped that this near-miss would be enough to make herself realize what she did have, before it was gone.

  


The event commemorating the Wizard's victory in Munchkinland was exquisite, down to its last detail. Booze was distributed in each of the Emerald City's districts, and something that had never happened before was promised: Ozma Herself would show her face to the City, after what the Wizard claimed was a very long illness. She would appear to only the select few who were invited to the apex of the event, which was to be hosted on a rooftop in the center of the city. The rooftop itself was surrounded by a maze of catwalks and thick supporting beams, which Elphaba imagined were designed to provide privacy of conversation even while the event was so obviously a display.

A hundred guests precisely were invited, and each allowed to bring one other person. Of course there were hundreds of onlookers, perched and lined along each of the towers surrounding the rooftop. Elphaba didn't doubt that they had chosen this rooftop precisely because it was so easy to watch. Either way, she didn't mind - she could lose herself in the crowds.

She thought briefly that this must be a trap for her, or the other terrorists who still resisted the Wizard's rule. It was so obviously vulnerable to a well-placed bomb. But such an event - it would be unwise to attack it, with the all the leaders and heroes of Oz in attendance - let alone Ozma herself, who would be a few years older than Elphaba. If she remembered correctly, that would be three years - so Ozma would be twenty-seven now, no child savior any longer.

Elphaba knew that it was a trick. They could present any woman to this crowd, and they'd eat it up. Ozma was meaningless, a legend and figurehead, and the fact that the Wizard hadn't used her as a front meant to Elphaba that she'd resisted him. Which meant she was likely dead, and the entire line with her, for only Ozma’s daughter would have the blood of Lurline, the Fairy Queen, in her veins - and Ozma was said to give birth to herself, over and over, so a childless Ozma would mean that the Queen was forever dead.

Of course the silly pagans would likely find some girl in the countryside and declare her Ozma Reincarnate, or something equally ridiculous.

Elphaba's attention was distracted from her musing by the appearance of Glinda. She couldn't hear the announcer’s voice over the chatter, but she could see Glinda bow, and then - a woman? - bowed beside Glinda. The woman was tall, willowy, with a sharp yellow pantsuit, and Elphaba nearly fainted as she watched the two of them walk down the stairs together.

She'd initially intended to overhear the many important conversations this night using a glass she'd brought for the purpose, and only watch the beginning of the event in person, but she found she could not tear herself away. Glinda would block the glass from focusing on her, so the only way she could watch Glinda was if she stayed right here, on the ledge at the corner of the tower.

So she did. She watched as the tall woman ordered them both a drink, and then led Glinda to a circle of socialites as if she knew them. She watched Glinda turn to the tall woman, gripping her upper arm, and smile slightly. Elphaba tried to remember the last time Glinda had ever smiled at her. It had been more than two years.

It had been more than two years since they'd seen each other, and one year since Glinda's re-entry into the Council, and she was _dating a woman._ Elphaba nearly fell off the rooftop. She nearly stepped through space to Glinda and punched that woman in the face, because nothing at all mattered but her own petty sense of ownership.

She didn't own Glinda. She had no right to hate this woman. She was the one who had ruined what they had. But logic held no sway over Elphaba today.

Finally, an hour after Glinda had arrived, she slipped away from her date, away from the crowds, along one of the darker catwalks, completely alone. This was Elphaba's chance, and she gauged the right spot to land, where it was dark. She didn't consider the consequences. If she died in this trap… No. She would not die here. It was not her time to die, not yet.

She landed on the darkest of corners, behind Glinda where she stood at the railing. Glinda stayed poised, looking over the rooftop and the citizens of the city, lined up in the apartment windows to watch the spectacle. Something in the way her spine stiffened made Elphaba certain that she'd heard the swirl of smoke that brought Elphaba along with it. Elphaba waited in the shadows until Glinda spoke.

“You have brought me nothing but the worst of heartbreak.” Her tone was clipped, and she barely turned her head, not looking at Elphaba.

All thought of Glinda's date fled Elphaba's mind at once. She spoke thoughtlessly, recklessly, as if the words would not stop for any blush of reason.

“I know you kept our child,” Elphaba told Glinda. “I've seen him learn to sit, and stand, and walk, and talk. He is beautiful, and looks just like you, Glinda.” Glinda didn't say anything, so Elphaba carried on. “Surely you can't say that was so bad.”

Glinda's hands were gripping the handrail so tightly that Elphaba feared for its integrity. Elphaba studied the dimness and light on her face with rapt attention, being careful to stay herself in the darkness, in the shadow that Glinda cast on the narrow causeway.

“You should leave,” Glinda told her finally, through clenched teeth.

Elphaba felt the spark of hope that had ignited after the long pause sputter and die.

“Please tell me where you go, and why you're gone so long. In spring and fall and last summer. Where are you going, Glinda? Is it something that you go to see?”

“Stop watching. Do not follow me, or you will truly know the wrath of Oz,” Glinda said harshly. She finally turned, and her eyes flashed, and Elphaba took a step back off the causeway and fell.

She got her broom under her after a few moments in free fall, and jetted away, passing like one of Fiyero's ghosts through the narrow alleys that separated the emerald towers. A wild recklessness overtook her, and on she flew, faster and faster.

Glinda didn't trust her. Wouldn't trust her again. She cursed herself and whatever had made her think she could approach Glinda.

It was seeing her that did it. She would have stayed away, if she hadn't seen Glinda in person. To have Glinda before her, and reasonably accessible - but Elphaba had known she did not want to talk - and yet it hadn't mattered what Glinda wanted, only the vast empty hole that she had left in Elphaba's chest had mattered, and Elphaba was so selfish to have let herself try to fill it. To air out loud the two things she had obsessed over, as if they were the things that would win Glinda back. They weren't. Elphaba had offered no argument to try to win Glinda's heart. She'd only demanded acknowledgement, as Charlie’s mother, as Glinda's past lover. As if Glinda's acknowledgement would grant Elphaba some place in Glinda's life. But Glinda was as far as she had ever been from Elphaba, and the distance was tangible.

Elphaba wanted to fuck, a drive she had not felt in what felt like a lifetime. Her thoughts turned to the red light district. It was too dangerous. And Elphaba had little enough money as it was.

She'd conceal herself. She needed to release herself from the prison of this love. Sex would open the lock. Elphaba had never kissed anyone but Glinda. She wondered how, after six years - seven? - she had never once wondered what it was like.

She hummed in frustration and set the broom down in some dark alley. She leaned her back against the wall and looked up at the clear night’s sky, lit by a thousand lanterns. She could not see a single star.

Not a single thing that brought her pleasure at all. No redemption, or hope. For the moment, Elphaba felt that like water, love only burned her.

Then her thoughts turned to Glinda's estate, and she remembered her son.

She wouldn't go there again. She wasn't welcome, and the servants did not know her and would never let her near the baby. But she could look.

She pulled a shard of glass wrapped in rags from her pocket and peered into it.

Charlie was in Dawn's arms, fussing and beating her head with a messy spoon. But he was instantly distracted, the moment she opened the connection, and Elphaba turned her vision around to see what he had seen.

It was a small mirror hanging on the wall of the cottage. He gurgled and fussed, and she turned the mirror back to his face.

He said, loudly and distinctly, “Green.”

Elphaba’s mirror shattered on the pitted cobblestones at her feet.


	16. Chapter 16

Charlie woke slowly. It was a Sunday, which meant that he had neither school nor the light housework that he took on during school breaks.

His sisters bickered in the kitchen. Eva, the littlest, always woke up Mary and Frankie, and then Mary began scolding her younger sisters. Charlie was grateful for his separate room, and resilient eardrums.

He shuffled out of his room around noon, lured by the smell of bread out the window and the feeling of tension in the air. He had the feeling something was happening, or would soon. When he had that feeling, it was seldom wrong.

Mary began scolding him the moment he appeared. “Charles, _please_ get the swing down from over the willow, and you do _not_ have the luxury of -”

He continued shuffling out the door to the little cottage that abutted the servants’ quarters. Despite himself, the sense of tension, and also the scent of bread, he walked first to the willow tree and reached up through the branches to detangle the swing. He shrugged at Mary as they passed. Mary didn't bother to offer her thanks for the effort.

Whatever. She _was_ shorter than him, still the height of their mother, and she'd asked on Eva's behalf, not her own. She'd developed a new attitude since Edgar-Marshall asked her to the Fall Ball this year, and she'd kissed him, which was _not_ what self-respecting fifteen-year-old girls whose education was being paid by the Uplands of the Upper Uplands should be doing during Fall Balls. That was Charlie's opinion, that is, but then he hadn't had a date to the Fall Ball so he had no grounds for an opinion.

He turned his head to look at his own reflection as he strolled toward the kitchens. Too tall and lanky, with a thin face and dirty blond hair that stood up on his head. At least Lady Upland took care of their clothes, so he was wearing a well-fitted vest over sharp trousers, all in dark blue with a nice, fashionable trimming. Maybe nicer than the average, but the Lady had always inexplicably preferred Charles.

She inevariably respected their Sunday afternoon appointment for piano lessons, if she was in town. He didn't mind piano, and didn't mind her, although he was already better at playing than she was. He looked forward to it for her stories. It wasn't every time, but for some reason she did sometimes pause their lessons to tell him some anecdote, and it was always so fantastical as to be unbelievable. She told him about the Wizard and the Emerald City, and the Vinkus, and the end of the Yellow Brick Road in the East. She loved to tell him about the Animals, encouraging him to visit their houseguests more frequently, which he hated to do because they always whispered to each other whenever they saw him. He usually heard their words, which were never unkind, but - still he wondered why, of all Frottica, _he_ would be the person whose development most interested them. It was frustrating because it was so unknowable, except he worried that it was his magic that attracted them.

It couldn't be, because he had learned what to do to control it. His mother and father knew, at least a bit, but nobody else knew that he used to levitate chairs and have visions of his guardian angel in the mirror.

Used to. He stopped walking and stood, stock-still and looking at the window-pane. Or - through it.

It couldn't be. But it - he moved to get a better angle, and then realized that he was peering through the glass into Lady Upland's study and dropped to sitting, leaning his head against the wall and listening keenly.

He could hear voices through the wall. Lady Upland was distinct, and at a slightly lower register, there was - it had to be, but it couldn't be. She didn't exist.

“Put that damn book away,” Lady Upland said.

And Baba said, “It is the only way I know to save him. I hate to do it, but a spell once cast can never be undone.”

“Oh, if I had known what would happen when I enchanted those shoes,” Lady Upland moaned. She paced over hardwood, and then onto carpet, seeming to disappear.

“You had no way of knowing,” Baba said comfortingly, and then she began chanting again.

“Elphaba, stop!” Lady Upland had never shrieked like that, not in Charlie's living memory.

And then there was another voice. “It was well worth it.” It was a man's voice, groaning sickly. “Just to see your face again, Miss Galinda.”

Lady Upland shrieked, “It was _not._ Not at the risk of your life, Boq!”

“It was. If there was a face I'd choose to see before I died, it would be yours. Please just stay with me.”

“Damn Nessarose,” Lady Upland muttered. Below their conversation, again Baba began murmuring. “How could she do this to you?”

“She wanted my heart, but I think the spell -” His voice cut off abruptly, and Charlie could hear thumping.

“What is the cost?” Lady Upland asked, as the thumping continued.

And then the thumping quieted. Baba said, after a pause, “It didn't work.”

“Oh, Boq,” Lady Upland lamented. “After all this time.” They were both silent for a while, and Charles had the chance to think.

Lots of new information had come his way. First, Baba was real. But then, he had always suspected as much. She had seemed improbable, but sometimes he caught glimpses of her life beyond the looking-glass, which seemed like a lot to imagine.

Second, Lady Upland and Baba knew each other well. Charles had never met anybody who'd talk to her like that - and vice versa. Yet their conversation had an intimacy that Charles had never witnessed from Lady Upland. Baba - of course, Baba was always friendly and helpful.

There were other pieces to the puzzle, but they were talking again and Charles bent his attention to listen.

Lady Upland said, “How is it that you always know when I need you?”

There was another long pause, and then Baba said, “You call for me. You didn't know? Even in school, you did.”

“Oh,” Lady Upland said. Charlie began second-guessing himself. Maybe he thought there was intimacy, but the Lady was cold now.

They knew each other in school? That must have been decades ago. At least - at least sixteen years.

“I think that will probably be the happiest time of my life,” Baba told Lady Upland. “I think of it often. How lucky was I, and so undeserving, and yet I still did not think there was anything I could do to preserve it. And I think of that time and realize that it was I that destroyed it. Is that right?”

There was another long pause, and then Baba spoke again. “I know it is painful, but I truly am sorry for the horrendous way I've treated you. I can understand if you never forgive me, but you can still call upon me and I will always come, for as long as I breathe. I promise, Glinda. I know it must be too late, but I had to tell you."

The words themselves were familiar to Charlie. It seemed strange - like a memory from another place - but he pushed the recognition away, compelled by urgency.

Baba would leave now. Would she leave through the side door, or the front? Charlie scrambled to his feet, to find that Lady Upland was looking out the window, basically on top of him. He scrambled down the pathway toward the side door, intending only to wait by it.

When he got to the door, though, he wrenched it open and ran down the corridor to Lady Upland's study. He could hear their voices beyond the door.

Without thinking, or considering the consequences, Charlie blasted through the study door, out of breath and flushed.

They both turned quickly to face him, with identical expressions of shock. Since they weren't saying anything, Charlie directed his attention to Baba.

“Baba. You're…” he stumbled. “Here?”

Instead of responding to him, Baba turned with an unreadable expression toward Lady Upland, who said shrilly, “Charles, go back to your cottage. Dawn must be looking for you.”

“I'm free today. It's Sunday,” he said stubbornly. “I saw you through the window. How do you know Baba?”

“How do _you_ know her?” Lady Upland was in a fit, trembling. She turned on Baba. “Elphaba, have you been - what have you been - how could you? When I asked -”

Charlie had the sense that he was missing something important, again. Baba responded before he could interject in her defense. “He has magic, Glinda. Uncontrollable, dangerous magic that he needs help with, and I am the only person who knows how to help him.”

“I'm coming with you,” Charlie decided, suddenly. “I need your help, Baba, and I think you could -”

“You will not,” Lady Upland said, at the same time that Baba said, “No.”

“I'm old enough to decide. I'm not your slave,” he told Lady Upland indignantly, puffing out his chest. Lady Upland looked visibly wounded by the words.

“Charlie…” she said.

Baba said quickly, “I will write,” and then she raised her hand and let it drop.

Charlie dove for her as she turned to smoke between his hands. Before she was fully gone, his fingers contacted some small thread of magic, and he gripped it tightly.

It yanked him hard through space. It was only an instant, but it felt like a short, sickening lifetime.

His feet hit stone, and he fell to his knees. Baba was there, in his face, shaking his shoulders. He heard her indistinctly.

“I'm ok, I'm ok,” he told her, trying to stand. He managed it, and Baba kept her hands on his shoulders, looking deeply into his eyes. She was just an inch shorter than he was.

“Do you know what you've done to Glinda?” Baba asked him, when the ringing had subsided.

“You're - I know who you are,” Charlie said, and Baba's face closed off. “Now that I know you're real. My life is boring, anyway, and I want to - I think this is where I belong.”

Where was he, anyway? A circular tower with a wide window that overlooked a forest filled with dead trees. “Where am I?” he asked, as Baba's hands fell from his shoulders.

“This is Kiamo Ko,” Baba said.

“And you are the Wicked Witch of the West,” he said softly, watching her expression. She shrugged a little, and that was all.

“I want to help you. Isn't that what we've been preparing for, since before I can remember?”

“No,” Baba said softly. “You need to return to Glinda.”

“Don't I get to decide?” he said indignantly. “I want to be with you!”

“You're _her_ son, and I have no right to you,” Baba said, and Charlie sat down quickly as the ringing in his ears returned full-force.

“What - what did you say?” he asked her vaguely.

“You said you knew who I was,” Baba said. She dropped to her knees beside him. “Charlie? How could you know that, and not know who she is?”

“The Wicked - who _are you,_ then, Baba?”

“Nobody!” Baba got up and paced away from him. “I am just your - your guardian angel. You're too young to join the opposition. You need to go to school, follow in Glinda's footsteps. She needs you in Frottica, Charlie.”

“How long have you known each other?” he asked her. He remembered what she'd said to Lady Upland. The words were familiar. “There are old letters, in Mo - in Dawn's chest of drawers. They're all addressed to - to ‘Glinda.' I thought she was - well, I never knew why Dawn had them. Are they yours?” They were love letters. Charlie felt as if he was on the cusp of an important revelation.

But instead of responding, Baba just scoffed and walked to the window.

“Mo - Dawn kept them all safe. I don't know why,” he said again.

“Legacies of a lost age,” Baba said finally.

“So you did write them!” Charlie was so excited that he kept to his feet. “You - you - if Lady Upland is my real mother, and she has never married, and you were once in love - are you also my mother?” Baba's shoulders shook, but she faced away. “If that's true then I will never leave! She had no right to keep us apart. She disowned me as her son, but you have never disappointed me! I will stay here with you forever, and help you defeat the Wizard!”

Baba sighed heavily and did not respond, but he rushed forward and threw his arms around her shoulders, squeezing. “I love you,” he told her. “This is going to be the best, I promise.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to keep the steam going... Give it a second .. sorry for the short chapter!

The man of tin carried out his duties with a mechanical ease that belied his feeling that something was very wrong. It had started when he carried that man's body out of his mistress's study.

It wasn't that he thought she was a murderer. He knew she was a witch, and a good one. He trusted her, and loved her, to the deepest core of his disparate parts and missing heart. 

It was just that he had the odd feeling that the body he'd carried, weeks ago, was his own. 

He didn't have a name for it. He remembered a time before that, so it couldn't be so. He remembered being pieced together, even, a machine of oiled wood and glass and copper and, mainly, tin. 

He remembered a self before the body, but he also had the sneaking, strange suspicion that he  _ did  _ have a name for what had happened to him. Necromancy, and he thought that this body of tin had a name now, too. 

It was a long time before he decided to tell his secret, and it was his mistress that he told first. When he told her, she cried for what seemed like hours. And then he didn't see her for a long time. When he saw her again, she was being carried in the arms of a tall man, broad of shoulder, dark of hair, and green of skin.

 

 

Charlie lay in his new cot and considered the stone wall before him.

On one hand, it wasn't so bad. He was in a real castle - no Frottica, no longer!

He'd met Chistery, who he'd always assumed was Baba's brother. Ends up, he's a Monkey. So, Charlie guessed… so it goes. That wouldn't be the biggest surprise Charlie had since yesterday.

His stockinged feet pattered in excitement against the stone wall before him. The wall was open to the corridor, and Charlie faced the gaping awning. The floor was uneven. It was actually just the side of the stairs that led downward from Baba's tower, so for better or for worse Charlie could monitor Baba's comings and goings. He was directly below her. The room had been used for brooms before him, but Baba mentioned that someone named Nana would be appalled at the accommodations if Baba did not arrange for a cot to be placed.

He wondered who Nana was. He wondered who Lady Upland was, after all that. His world was upended, giddily. He was brazen, and upended, and guileless in this new life.

There were people he did not wonder about. They were the ones that mattered the most: Mother and Father, Eva and Frankie and damn Mary, who was his age and red-haired, and who'd kissed a boy. 

They were so unexciting compared to  _ this. _ Charlie felt the thrill of adventure fill his chest. His feet tapped impatiently against the wall, as if to climb it.

What would Baba do with him now? 

Because  _ that _ was the other hand. She wasn't happy. Charlie wanted to pretend that Baba was his guardian angel, who he'd grown away from over time. But even just a few weeks past, he had been seeing her everywhere. In the pond, and windows, and certainly in glass. It still qualified as rare, but he glimpsed her at least once a week. Most of the time that was all - a glimpse. 

And Charlie had built a mythos around it. He felt like Baba was his angel. 

_ This _ woman in her tower was no angel. She was closed-off, unfriendly. She'd shrugged off his hug earlier today, and corralled him here without even a guide. Obviously she had servants, but she'd just told Chistery to cloister Charlie in this room, and provide a cot, and nobody had talked to him since. 

Charlie spun his feet and hips, landing definitively on the floor. He was used to a thump, or a booted  _ click _ , but with socks on his feet hit the stone floor with a muted  _ plop. _ He was disappointed.

He made to stand, and as he did so, a figure bolted up the stairs.

It was a man. Charlie leapt up and trailed the fellow on his way up the stairs to Baba's tower. He was far behind, and so heard the first whisperings of conversation before he arrived.

“It's happened! An army division as far south as Qhoyre!” The man's voice was deep, and Charlie felt enthusiasm ignite his veins for whatever this man said.

He was silhouetted in the darkness of Baba's tower. Charlie burst in behind him, and Baba turned to him, scowling mightily.

Never had a woman so cowed Charlie. Mother's scorn did not have half as much force as Baba's disapproval. Charlie shrank from her, and turned to the man.

He was Gillikin, and brunette, and immediately overwhelming. He was well-built, with a definitive shape of jaw. Charlie was overcome.

“Qorherie?” Charlie stumbled, and faced the disapproval of these two most important people. He was certain, suddenly, that he would be sent back to Frottica. “I want to help!” he said quickly.

“Charlie?” the man said slowly, and Charlie knew with this tone of voice that the man knew him as a child. 

“Who are you?” he said, and his voice cracked as he tried to hit the deepest note of his voice.

“Fiyero, to you.” The man seemed to hesitate. “To you, perhaps, the heir of the Tigelaar territories, if you know what they are.”

“Ruled by the Margreave of Tigelaar?” Charlie responded eagerly, but they both turned their faces away from him and he could not tell why.

“How long have you been locked away in this dreary tower?” he asked them, and they turned father away from him. He could see the setting sun through the open windows of the tower, and the moon loomed orange and huge on the horizon over them. “Have you all lost hope? What do you fight for? I know that you fight.” Without effort, but accompanied by his enthusiasm, his voice dropped to a growl. “I know that you do not accept the way things are. We do not acquiesce. Do we?”

“Charlie,” Baba began, turning to him. Her greenness was more pronounced in the darkness, in the encroaching sunset, and Charlie suddenly wondered what her expression actually was, although their faces were barely a foot apart.

“I am not too young. Tell me!” he growled, and Baba actually barked out a laugh. 

“You need to go home,” she managed. “Charlie, you need to go home.”

“I won't,” he told her, standing as tall as he could. He noted that he was just slightly taller than she was. “I'll go with you to Quorrie. I want to help. I want to fight. After you've given me a chance, if you still want to, send me home then.”

Fiyero glanced at Baba, but Baba didn't break her eye contact with Charlie. “Glinda will never forgive me if I keep you,” she told him quietly.

“I'm nobody's to keep or bring about. I have magic.” He raised his hand, and fire sprouted between his fingers, without effort. Fiyero looked surprised, although Baba did not. “And I'm fifteen, a grown man. You'll regret sending me back, if you don't give me a chance. This is where I want to be. With you.” 

He licked his lips, let the flame gutter into coals on his palm. “You know I always knew I was different. Nobody ever treated me like I belonged. It wasn't just you, Baba. Lady Upland, too, and all the scholars that stay in Frottica, and you know,” he whispered. “Once an ambassador from the Emerald City came to visit and asked after me specifically, and I heard them through the courtyard, and Lady Upland told them I was on a school trip and couldn't be shown. They all talked like I mattered, and now I know why, and do you really think that if they all know that I'm  _ your _ son, Lady Upland could protect me from them? She can't do anything but float around in that stupid bubble.”

Baba's frown grew as he finished his argument, and she finally glanced at Fiyero, who shrugged back at her. 

“You can stay here while we figure out what to do,” Baba told him finally. 

So he was ready, at midnight, when they tried to take flight out Baba's open tower window. 

He followed them. He never had learned to fly, but he could leap, and he leapt from the tower to the ground and then after them, alighting on treetops just long enough to bounce from them, along Baba's jet trail of magic as she tried to lose him.

Silly Baba, to think that she could abandon him! She should know that she trained him too well for that. In the morning, Baba had given up her attempt, and she offered him her sleep roll and climbed a tree to rest in its branches above Charlie and Fiyero. Fiyero just rolled his eyes and went along with the entire thing, and Charlie spent the share of the morning watching his chest rise and fall, and the sunlight dapple across his smooth face and gorgeous shoulders, too thrilled to sleep and too young to look away.


	18. Chapter 18

Charlie had hoped that Baba would like him better once she got used to the idea that he wasn't going to just go home. He tapped his fingertips against his thighs and drummed his feet together and tried to strategize.

Around noon, Fiyero stirred from sleep and Charlie pretended to do the same. Fiyero unpacked the food in his bag and Baba scowled at Charlie while they ate.

Fiyero filled up the tense silence with a monologue. “Qhoyre is at the end of the road built while I was a boy. At the time, the Wizard had intended to drain the swamps, or so I understand.” He shot a look at Elphaba, who looked inexplicably amused. When nobody responded to him, he said, “The road has fallen into disrepair and has almost disappeared in places. Although we rarely travel by road, or to Quadling Country, in fact.”

“Is it true that they are red-skinned?” Charlie asked him.

Fiyero almost giggled. “Not red like our Elphaba is green, but the hue is distinct.”

“And the land is swampy, isn't it?”

“It is. Frottica is a piece of heaven compared to the swamplands, my boy.”

“You're foolish to have come,” Baba broke in. “How do you plan to proceed? There is not room on my broom for you, Charlie.”

“I'm just as fast as you on the broom, Baba,” Charlie protested. Now that they were standing, though, his arms and legs were aching. He had never traveled in this way for so long. It wasn't the time in the air that was hard - it was the leap, and the landing, that hurt. Maybe he'd get used to it, over time.

“The trees in Quadling Country are too flimsy for you to leap between, and the swamp too thick for you to land on the ground. You need to go back home.”

“Just let me come for a while, with you. How long will it be? And where are we headed?”

Fiyero said, “We go to spy on the Wizard's army, and to connect with the Resistance network. To see whether and how they plan to act. To discover whether it is rubies or slaves the Wizard is after, if we can.”

“The Gillikinese magisters have supported this new move because the Wizard has promised a Ruby city alongside his Emerald one,” Baba said, voice dripping with something Charlie thought could be dry amusement. “My sister has not weighted in at all.”

“Your… sister?” Charlie was taken aback. Did that mean that Baba was not the Wicked Witch of the West? Was there another green witch in this land?

“The Eminent Thropp,” Baba told him, watching his face.

The ruler of Munchkinland. “Oh,” Charlie said. “Seems cool to have a sister who's that important, I guess,” he told her.

Baba scoffed. “I would have hoped that she would support Glinda's position, but I suppose - maybe, what happened with Boq ruined that chance.”

“Lady Upland opposes the invasion?”

“Enough,” Baba said. “We should go. We can gossip at our next break. And if you lose us, you'll hire a carriage to Frottica. Do you have enough gold?”

Charlie huffed as he checked his purse. “I don't know how much it would be,” he told her planitively, spreading the coins on his palm.

“It is enough,” Baba told him, with something like curiousity flashing over her face.

And so it began again. Charlie thought that he was like a leaping frog. He often had to wait as they caught up to him, because his leaps were much faster than the broom. He played with the idea of leaping up to pass by them, or even trying to catch ahold of the broom and seeing what they'd do about it. But even though Baba had spoken to him, he thought it was probably too risky a game.

They rested again at midnight. It was two long days in a row, and when Charlie's head was nestled in his pillowed cloak, he slept instantly.

When he woke, Baba was standing facing the sun as it peeked over a hill. He stirred, and sat up, and Baba noticed and silently sat beside him on the bedroll.

“You are the Thropp Descending,” Baba told him as he blinked sleepily at the sunrise. “Nessa is childless, and my brother comes after you. I had not thought of it, until yesterday. I hadn't thought that I would ever meet you, or that you would find out - that we are - related. So it didn't seem to matter. But I suppose that it does.”

Charlie blinked slowly and worked to comprehend what Baba was telling him. He was fuzzy on the rules of lineage, but it didn't seem possible.

“You're next in line,” he said to her.

“No, I was disenherited. Precedent dictates that my son would still come before my brother.” When she said _my son,_ he felt a strange chill. He hadn't thought she'd ever say those words, but they rolled off her tongue like it was nothing. He felt like the world was slipping sideways, and in the early morning the sensation was more disorienting than exciting.

“But nobody knows who I am.”

“That doesn't matter. That is easily solved,” Baba told him. “What matters is that the Wizard will not want you to take the throne, if it came to that. You were right that Glinda did not protect you enough. She wanted you to have a normal childhood, but there is no normal in times such as these.”

“Why did she do that?” He struggled to find a better way of describing what he was asking, but it looked like Baba didn't need the question to be any more specific. Still, she didn't respond, instead directing her attention to her fingernails.

“Was she - did she want me? Does she _hate_ me?” The question could have hurt, but Charlie found that didn't care enough for that. Baba loved him, and his parents did - his adoptive parents, who must have known the entire time, but treated him as their son anyway. What did it matter what Lady Upland thought of him, when she remained a stranger to him?

The question shook Baba, though. She turned urgently to him. “You can't think that, Charlie. She has done everything that she thinks she can do for you. She has risked much, to keep you close to her.”

Charlie twisted his lips and rolled his eyes at the sky, turning her words over in his mind. He wasn't close to her, so that was a stupid way to put it, wasn't it?

“What has she risked?” he said instead.

“The Wizard's Council is fraught with politics, and she has... a lot of influence, enough to counter the Wizard, sometimes. She works from the inside, but on the same goals as I do. It's an important position. You can tell when she's away, because the rest of the Council wilts and follows the Wizard's designs. It is hard to imagine what the Council would look like if she was completely gone from it. You are - a liability to her, which the Council delicately ignores. Do you understand?”

Charlie had stopped listening when she said that Lady Upland worked on the same goals as Baba. “You've been working together, all this time? Why haven't I seen you before? Is that where she goes? To visit you?”

Baba's face fell. “Not at all,” was what she said.

“How do you mean? How can you work together, then?”

“We don't _coordinate._ We just have the same goals.”

“Oh,” Charlie said. “So then how am I - I thought -” He tried to put his question delicately, although he was fifteen and the subject was well-worn in his thoughts.

Baba smirked. “Sixteen years ago, we were close. We've since gone our separate ways.”

Charlie jumped and turned to her. “It was because of what she did with me, wasn't it?”

“Not at all,” Baba said, still amused, and Fiyero stirred behind them, yawning loudly. “Yero, your heavy head has been blocking the food,” she told him, and the conversation was over.

Baba said that they'd arrive at the city that night. It wasn't surprising to Charlie, because even he could see that the landscape was changing.

It was funny, because Baba taught Charlie what to do with his magic, and yet she'd thought he couldn't land on the spindley swamp trees. She didn't know that he barely had to touch them before leaping skyward again. As long as he didn't actually land, it didn't matter how small the branch was that he touched.

If he didn't leap quickly, though, he did begin crashing through the branches, sometimes landing in a heap on the spongy turf at the base of the trees. It was harder to follow Baba and Fiyero now, just because it was harder to wait for them. It was lucky that Baba's broom left a vivid streak of magic that was impossible to miss, even from miles away.

He could tell that it was magic, and not visible to most people. He had learned to differentiate between things of magic that could not be seen by others, and things of the mundane world. It was an essential survival skill, which Baba had taught him well. That was part of the reason he kept knowledge of his magic privileged.

He'd actually assumed that Lady Upland knew, and just chose not to mention it. He thought maybe that was why she'd wanted to teach him piano.

Because Charlie's magic was so obvious, just as Baba's was. When Charlie looked at Baba, he could see the magic swirling between her finger tips. The color of her magic nearly matched the color of the magic that danced between his own fingers, and shot like bolts of lightning through his veins. If Charlie could see Baba's magic, and his own, why couldn't Lady Upland see Charlie's?

Charlie considered the bright green streak of magic that cut through the dusk toward him, and looked at the depleted aqua magic that sputtered weakly between his fingers, and remembered the color of Lady Upland's magic, and felt a flash of deep resentment toward her for the first time.

He was grouchy, he realized. That was why he felt that way. Lady Upland just didn't matter. It didn't matter that Charlie's magic matched hers as well as it matched Baba's, even though if Charlie had his way, he'd only be green.

His thoughts turned to Munchkinland. He barely knew anything about it. One thing he did know was that it was huge, way bigger than Frottica. _That_ was his inheritance from Baba?

Did he want it? He could barely grasp what that might mean. Was the Eminent Thropp a king? The king over a bunch of farms, or something. It didn't seem that great. He wondered if there was a castle. Like Baba's castle, or even bigger, since Munchkinland was so big. Had Baba grown up in a castle? He tried to imagine her as a child, and failed.

They made camp at dusk. The city's lights were visible in the distance. Fiyero explained that he would be going into the city at midnight and seeking out their contacts, and Baba would spy on him to be sure that he was safe.

Baba didn't look at him at all as they set up their rolls on a hillock, and he tried to catch her eye. The only thing she said was, “You'll stay with me, Charlie,” and then she was gone, climbing up the nearest tree.

“She always gets quiet when she's nervous,” Fiyero mumbled to Charlie, and Charlie looked up to find that he was smiling easily. Charlie's palms instantly became sweaty.

“Why's she nervous?” Charlie asked Fiyero.

“She hates not being able to protect me. She thinks I'll be killed.”

“It's not that dangerous, is it?”

“Not at all,” Fiyero assured him, and then he wiggled into his sleeping roll and turned away from Charlie.

Charlie was totally exhausted, and fell asleep instantly. He woke with them at midnight and watched over Baba's shoulder into her crystal as she followed Fiyero's movements. It went stale quickly, and Baba was totally ignoring him. The ground was not comfortable, but he slept there anyway, propped up against her shoulder.

When he woke again, it was day, and Baba was still watching her crystal. Fiyero was sitting alone, his head tipped back against a wooden wall. It looked like he was sleeping. Baba kept spinning the viewpoint of her crystal around him in a dizzying whirl that turned Charlie's stomach, so Charlie lay back down on top of his bedroll in the sunlight and napped away the rest of the day.

He woke in a jolt from a nightmare. In the dream, there was a farmhouse in the sky. It spun lazily, and then Charlie realized that it was actually plummeting downward precipitously. He woke right before the house hit the ground, sitting up and looking over at Baba.

In the crystal, the exact same farmhouse was on the ground. From underneath it protruded two feet, shod in distinctive silver shoes that Charlie had never seen before.


	19. Chapter 19

“Nessa,” Baba choked out.

Charlie leapt to his feet. “What?”

“My sister,” Baba said. Her eyes were totally distant. “I have to go, _now.”_ As if by design, the farmhouse in the crystal was replaced by Fiyero’s sleeping face. Baba narrowed her eyes. “You'll take my broom and go to him. You'll attract no attention. Ask for the Tusk and Antlers if you can't find him. I have to go.”

Charlie nodded uncertainly, but when she shoved her broom in his hands he realized that he was suddenly important. “What happened?”

“A vision of the future, Charlie,” she told him. “I'll stop it. I'll find her before it happens.”

“Okay,” Charlie agreed. “We'll meet you there.”

She was gone before he got out the last word.

She'd underestimated the level of attention a foreigner would attract in this city. He felt watched, nearly harried. It was, however, nearly easy to find Fiyero.

He woke him by dragging out the chair across from him, and quickly explained the situation. Fiyero led him back out the city, and they shared the broom as Elphaba and he had, with Fiyero riding behind. Charlie tightened the muscles in his stomach and shoulders, hoping that Fiyero would think that he felt strong, although his body was stringy like Baba’s.

It took three days. Midway through the third day, a storm blew up. It was a storm the likes of which Charlie had never experienced. It turned the sky gray from horizon to horizon. The wind buffeted them on their broom, pushing them off the path and then nearly spinning them both completely around. Fiyero shamelessly clung to Charlie. He seemed to acknowledge that in this situation, at least, he was totally helpless.

Finally, Charlie brought them down in the midst of a forest. On the ground, the wind was so strong that even shouting, they could barely hear each other. They crouched together at the base of a tree, hearing branches creak, and the crash of what Charlie could only assume were trees being ripped from their roots. He tapped his fingers on his knees and thought of Baba. The thought occurred to him that this was the storm that had brought the house. So it had come, as they both had seen. He hoped that Baba was able to stop the tragedy from happening, but he had the feeling that she probably couldn’t.

Fiyero spotted the cyclone first. They both watched as the house plummeted, barely slowed by the cyclone.

At least, they knew where to go, now. When the house landed, the air stilled, and they mounted the broom and sped to the place. It was still far enough away that Charlie had time to imagine what they would find when they got there. A pair of feet, with sparkling shoes. Baba, on her knees, mourning. Or maybe a woman, Baba’s sister. Charlie wondered if the Eminent Thropp was green, and what his aunt might think of him.

Again, Fiyero spotted the house first. And he said, nearly awed, “Glinda.” Charlie wasn’t so certain that the woman in the huge blue ball gown was Lady Upland, but Fiyero leaned forward and Charlie could feel the excitement in him. They knew each other, too. Charlie leaned along with Fiyero and put on more speed.

As they approached, Baba came into view. She was facing the woman in the gown, almost crouching, defensive, maybe. Neither had noticed Charlie and Fiyero.

Then, along the road - Charlie opened his mouth to warn her, but she was totally oblivious, and the wind stole the breath from his lungs - soldiers, with rifles all aimed at Baba - three leapt ahead of the rest and detained Baba, and Baba seemed to collapse further as she saw them.

Fiyero was right. It was Lady Upland. Charlie tried to find the shining shoes, but they were invisible to him. He brought the broom down before they got too close, hoping that nobody had seen him.

The moment they alit, Fiyero sprinted away. He was fumbling at his belt as he disappeared from view, and Charlie put the broom over his shoulder and hiked after, feeling a sudden sense of dread. Even his sense of foreboding didn’t make him blind to his surroundings. If this was Munckinland, it was strikingly beautiful, with manicured beds of roses and other flowers, and winding paths made for small feet.

He could hear Fiyero before he saw any of them. “Let the green girl go,” he was saying. “Or you’ll have to explain to the Wizard why Glinda the Good was killed on your watch.”

Charlie went to a knee and peered through the underbrush. His eyes went to Baba first, who looked crushed, small between the men that held her arms. And there was Fiyero, a pistol in his hand, pointed at Lady Upland. Lady Upland was reaching toward Fiyero with a look of beseeching. Her mouth made the shape of Fiyero’s name, but Fiyero was focused on the guards, and Baba, and did not seem to see Lady Upland at all.

“Do it,” Lady Upland finally said to the guards, and they seemed to shift, looking to their captain. Charlie saw one tip his weapon from Baba to Fiyero, and Fiyero began walking backwards to keep them all in view.

Fiyero was in danger. He would be hurt if that man shot him. It would be easy enough for the guard to do it - just a calculated risk - Charlie scuttled closer, hoping that Fiyero could somehow turn these odds. If Charlie made a distraction - maybe a fireball, from the bushes - but Fiyero had the situation under control now, and if he distracted them it would go to pieces in an instant.

The captain nodded slightly, and they all turned their guns on Fiyero. The three men holding Baba released her, but she barely moved away from them. “Glinda,” she said, barely audibly. “Yero.” She looked down at her empty hands.

“Go! I will meet you!” Fiyero shouted, and Baba turned and ran.

Fiyero dropped the gun to his side when she was away, and the guards leapt to detain him. Finally, Charlie moved. He threw a fireball on the other side of the clearing, arching it high, and when they turned to the explosion, he ran out of the bushes.

“Charles,” Lady Upland said, and she ran toward him. He circled away from her and lit another fireball in his hands.

“The next one to your heads, if you won’t release him,” Charlie said. But they didn’t really hesitate, this time. They just shot him. It was more than one bullet. He barely felt himself falling.

 

 

“Please, Elphie,” Glinda sobbed. Her fingers bit into Elphaba's side, and her face made a wet spot that burned against Elphaba's shoulder as they crouched together over the Grimmerie. “You have to find something.”

Elphaba felt her stomach churn. The lump in her throat nearly choked her. There was nothing. After the failure with Boq, she'd looked through again, more carefully. There was nothing to heal a heart that was destroyed like this. He'd been dead before he hit the ground, barely moved from the spot he lay. His crystal eyes were open, staring at her. At _them,_ his parents, who were helpless to save him.

Behind Glinda there were bodies. Blood. Blackened flesh and death, which was something Elphaba had always feared and never embraced in her powers. It had happened anyway, and she did not regret it now. Death was these men’s justice, and she did not regret bringing it to them. They deserved worse. She only wished that she had turned around quicker - had realized the implications of the fact that if Fiyero was here, Charlie was here - had recognized that Charlie’s childish bravery in this situation would be his undoing. Elphaba was to blame, and she could not set it right now.

Glinda's sobbing reached new heights as Elphaba hesitated. The spell she'd used on Boq was the only one. “It didn't work,” she barely whispered, and then she began chanting.

When she said the last line, she closed her eyes. Without looking, she knew that it had done nothing. She turned her shoulders and grasped Glinda, expecting for Glinda to pull away at any moment, but Glinda moulded herself even closer, burying her face in Elphaba's neck.

Glinda, who had been so long lost. Now, in just over a week, they'd seen each other twice. Though the situations were fraught, Glinda felt so much the same. Her hair was, if anything, more perfect. She still smelled like Glinda, and Elphaba pulled her closer. She breathed and remembered their son, and her heart shattered almost audibly in her chest. It was a heartbreak that echoed and amplified the loss of Nessa. The twin losses were too much to bear.

Glinda nuzzled her neck, and Elphaba shifted her hand to the back of her head. Fiyero was here, somewhere, and Elphaba didn't care at all.

Their lips met messily, and then with intent. “Elphie,” Glinda moaned. Elphaba silenced her with another kiss. Glinda would pull away, now. And... now. And now.

But instead she was heaving, wet-eyed, lost. Elphaba closed her eyes and imagined the only place that she wanted to be. She pulled away from Glinda's embrace to look at her, and then she spirited herself away, trusting Glinda to follow her.

As she'd suspected, Glinda had kept her childhood room in Frottica. Glinda spared a look for the room before pushing Elphaba to sitting on her bed and pulling up her skirts to mount her.

“Glin -” Elphaba started, and Glinda put her hand over Elphaba's mouth forcefully. Her knees dug into Elphaba's hips, and she pushed down on Elphaba's lap before jerking up and making it a gyration. Elphaba fell back into the bed.

Elphaba's hands were under the skirt. She ran them up Glinda's garters, skipping along the bare flesh of her upper thighs, and to her underthings.

“Fuck,” Elphaba said around Glinda's fingers. She didn't want this, not now, not after what happened. This would solve nothing, and produce only more pain.

Glinda slipped her third finger into her mouth. It was salty, and Elphaba closed her lips and sucked hard, a tingle through the top of her mouth, while she delved with one hand through the cloth separating them.

She found Glinda, and they both shuddered. All hesitation fell away. She fumbled anyway, trying to find her way with the obstruction and unfamiliarity of this after so many years. She was eager, and sloppy, and Glinda watched her face and twitched her hips impatiently.

She found the sopping opening, finally, and sunk inside. Glinda made a howling sound, rolling her hips, and Elphaba's tears stung her face, but now their bodies were linked together and they paired hotly, jerkily, repressed yet knowing, pleasureless but driven, raw and unhealed and wanting nothing more than to rub their open wounds together.

It had been fifteen years, and it felt like yesterday since they'd last laid together. It was painful, but Elphaba savored everything. She dug deeply and found the place that made Glinda shudder, and she sucked on Glinda's finger and felt herself subsumed by Glinda, made only into an instrument of Glinda's body. It was the numbness that they chased by doing this. And Glinda drove her hips down into Elphaba's hand, barely pulling away enough to make it a stroke, insatiable. It was like Glinda wanted every part of her again, and would take her in this way. Rather than softly, she'd take her in violence, and Elphaba arched her back and pumped harder, wanting nothing more.

Elphaba was conscious enough to be grateful that it was her that Glinda chose. Maybe it was proximity, but Glinda must still want this from her, too. It wasn't hatred that filled Glinda's eyes as she rode Elphaba. It couldn't only be. They had just fought so viciously, before the Gale Force arrived, over Charlie and Nessa and Nessa’s shoes, and at that time if you'd told Elphaba they'd be together like this in less than an hour - if you'd told her, maybe she wouldn't have even been surprised, because as they fought the energy between them nearly ignited the air. Glinda was so beautiful. They were close once, in a way that years couldn't ever erase, and for better or worse their business was unresolved.

Glinda wouldn't climax, and Elphaba had nothing to stimulate her, so their bodies’ physical limits were what stopped them. It was Glinda who withdrew, with eyes that struck Elphaba suddenly as guarded.

Elphaba struggled to stand. She felt beaten, and yet not enough for it to be right. She wanted to hurt more. Her hand burned mercilessly. Her vision blurred. She panted, wanting so much, so badly.

“I have tried -” she started, staggering toward Glinda.

Glinda turned away sharply. “Leave,” she barked.

“I -” _love you. Have always loved you. I was so afraid to show you how much you mean to me._

She was still afraid. She was so easily reduced to nothing. Like Boq, she had been dismissed by Glinda.

Her heart hammered. She fell to her knees and grasped Glinda's hand, bringing it to her lips and then clutching it close to her heart, hoping for healing. She was speechless with grief. Breath for breath, they matched each other in the silence and the dark. Glinda did not pull away, although she was still facing the door.

When she left this room, it would come back. As long as she clung like this to Glinda, she could fend it off. It - the unspeakable thing - Elphaba closed her eyes and tried to breathe. She shifted her grip on Glinda's hand, and Glinda was spurred to flight. Her hand twisted out of Elphaba's and she left the room, closing the door behind her.

Elphaba collapsed on the bed. She buried her face in Glinda's pillows. She pulled up her own skirts and rode fingers still soaking with Glinda's desire, grunting into the pillows and imagining Glinda splayed naked under her, driving her own pelvis into her open hand until her mind blanked. Afterward, there was nothing to distract her from her grief.

She imagined staying here, broken with this thing, waiting until Glinda came at last to the bedside and saved her. She felt it close - this despair that could drive her to madness, the loss of the one person who had loved her, the baby she'd blessed with protection and had loved so dearly, the man who would not leave her to go home to safety, too brazen and young to see reason, her son. She could fall into a daze, a coma, here in this bed. Maybe Glinda would hold her then. Maybe they could lay together in nakedness and sharing. If she could attract Glinda's pity, because that was the only thing she really ever had from Glinda. _The artichoke._

She dragged herself upright, arranging her clothes. It was three steps through space today, and this would be her last.

She went back to Charlie's body, and Fiyero. Together, they made their way home.


End file.
